


One Dim Beacon

by SusieBeeca



Series: Amor Vincit Omnia [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: All Is Fair in Love and War, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gem War, Graphic Rape, Graphic Torture, Illustrations, Mind Games, Physical Disability, Prisoner of War, chipped gem theory, graphic depcitions of violence, illustrated fanfic, massive trigger warnings, pretentious use of latin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2018-12-26 13:40:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12060132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SusieBeeca/pseuds/SusieBeeca
Summary: Being a prisoner of war is humiliating, but Bismuth knows she needs to stay strong. To her surprise, she finds hope far behind enemy lines.Hopefully at least one illustration per chapter!This is a prequel (of sorts) to Counterfeit Corruption, but you don't need to read that fic to understand this one. :)(Canon divergent as of "Lars of the Stars". I wanted to get this out there before the episode aired!)





	1. At First Glance

 

Bismuth barely had the strength to lift her head when she heard the door open, but she forced herself to do it. It had been three days she’d been down here, and aside from the screams they’d managed to wrench out of her, she hadn’t shown these quartz bitches any sign of weakness. She wasn’t about to start now. “Back so soon? Aw, didja miss me?” she sneered.

It was hard to see out of her bruised, swelling eyes, but she noticed the figure at the door startle, water splashing to the floor. She was backlit from the hallway, heavy shadows cast over her face, and Bismuth squinted, scanning her body to find a gem. A tingle of relief coursed through her when she realized this wasn’t one of the quartzes. She was green, that much she could tell---not fat enough to be a Diopside, not short enough for a Jade. Someone with hair like that was no Peridot. And the way she was dressed, no way in hell was she an Emerald.

“I... haven’t... met you before,” she whispered, and shuffled her hands back and forth over the pole she had resting on her shoulders. Buckets were weighing down the ends.

Bismuth narrowed her eyes. _What the fresh hell is this all about? Are they trying to play mind games with me now?_ “Well, you gonna come in and have your fun, or are you just planning on lingering in the doorway?”

The stranger took a faltering step inside, then another one. She seemed to be placing her feet very carefully. When her face came into focus, Bismuth frowned---she had a kind of guarded, faraway look in her eyes, and she was staring resolutely down at the floor. Definitely not the countenance of a torturer.

“I’ve come to clean you up,” she said, as if reading her thoughts. Then, helpfully, “You smell really terrible.”

“Thank you for your opinion, which I asked for, apparently.”

She made her way up to her, still spreading her bare toes along the ground as she moved those delicate paces, and stopped just a few inches from her prisoner, so close she could have felt her breath. It was unsettling, but for some reason Bismuth had a feeling this little gem didn’t mean it.

As she was unhooking her buckets and setting them on the ground, Bismuth caught a glimpse of a glimmer from her elbow, and gasped. “You ARE an Emerald!”

She’d been pulling rags out of the front of her shirt, but that made her pause. “No. I’m a pearl.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” She watched her dipping the cloth into the first bucket. “No pearl has tits like yours. And besides, I can _see_ your gem! You’re an Emerald, dammit!”

She wrung out the excess water and rose back up to her full height, about shoulder-level to Bismuth. “Not anymore,” she said with a kind of hopeless finality.

She opened her mouth to ask a question, but then realized she didn’t know which one to ask first. ‘Not anymore’? Quartzes could get demoted; it was unusual, but it did happen. Agates who got too overzealous with their punishments were quietly shuffled off to different colonies. Peridots were reassigned all the time. But Emeralds, as far as she knew, were too rare to lose their positions unless they did something _heinous_.

Her previous relief turned sour in her throat. What the hell had this gem done?

She held the cloth up to her prisoner’s face, but before touching her with it, she pulled back and bit her lip. Despite herself, Bismuth grinned a bit when she noticed the overbite; apparently even the upper-crusts were prone to little defects. “You need to tell me what hurts.”

“Oh, for the love of... _Everything_ hurts, idiot!”

She hesitated, still gazing off to the side. Maybe she embarrassed easily---or maybe this was her attempt at preserving some of her prisoner’s modesty. Bismuth tried not to resent her for this; even though this demoted gem was wearing a dress so tattered it had holes in some revealing places, at least _she_ had clothes on.  
“Then I’ll start with your face.”

She began dabbing gently at her forehead, and something registered in Bismuth’s mind---the wet cloth was much warmer than she’d expected it to be. “Did you heat the water up?”

The ‘pearl’s face flushed a deeper green. “I-I thought you’d be more comfortable...”

She laughed, long and loud and completely without joy. “Your asshole friends have been torturing me for days, and you worry if I’m comfortable?” she said in disbelief.

“They’re not my FRIENDS!”

She immediately shrunk back, as if her startled shout was going to get her a slap, but there wasn’t much Bismuth could do with her hands chained above her head. She’d given up trying to shapeshift; whatever that wire-and-shard contraption they’d hooked onto her gem was, it was blocking her from using her powers. Worse still, every time she tried, it gave her a nasty shock. She hated the helplessness. It wasn’t the most embarrassing thing about her capture, but it had to be up there.

“I’m s-sorry. I didn’t mean to yell,” she said down to the floor.

Bismuth pressed her lips into a line, but she couldn’t deny the pang of pity she’d felt. “It’s fine, Emerald.”

“...I’m a pearl,” she said softly, and then got back to work.

She kept murmuring quietly, asking Bismuth if she wanted one area cleaned more than another, and was even kind enough to give her a mouthful of water to gargle away the taste of blood. After that, Bismuth eyed her closely, and started to feel some of her earlier resentment begin to seep away; this meek gem had the air of a whelp who’d been bitten too much and too severely and too deeply. Fresh-faced as she was, it looked like she had a story etched in the tense, guarded tightness around her eyes. Eventually curiosity overtook her and she began asking questions, but got little more than standard answers: She’d served under Yellow Diamond. No, she never tripped on her hair. Yes, she liked it that long. Two years she’d been on Earth, a few months in transit. No, she didn’t like the planet. It scared her. Although she’d rarely needed it, her weapon was a long club, the length of her body. Yes, she would like spikes added to it, but didn’t see that as being feasible in the near future. She was about 1300 years old. Yes, she’d been told she looked younger before, and thank you for saying so.

By the time she got to her shoulders, she started asking a few stuttering questions back, and Bismuth was more free with her answers: They’re not ‘weird braids’, they’re called dreadlocks. Yes, you can touch them. No, you probably wouldn’t be able to do the same with your hair, but it looks fine the way it is. What? Oh, two thousand, give or take a few, which makes the ‘pearl’ a whippersnapper by comparison. Yes, she’d met the renegade Pearl, and in fact considered her to be one of her best friends. No, she wasn’t ‘frightening’---more charmingly neurotic than anything. ‘The hybrid fusion’ had a name, thank you very much, and it was Garnet. Yes, she loved the Earth, and no, she didn’t mind the occasional tornado. They made her feel more alive. Early mornings were nicer than sunsets, in her opinion; you can see the planets better.

“I guess that was never a problem for you,” she ventured. Emeralds were renowned for their long-distance vision; most could see past even the largest planet’s horizons, and the purest, rarest of them all had sight measured in lightyears.

She nodded, but seemed to be a bit more nervous when she answered. “I saw twin neutron stars collide once. It sent shockwaves through the galaxy.”

“So why are you down here, anyway?” she went on as the Emerald began rubbing just above her gem. “Shouldn’t you be out stargazing with the rest of the Emeralds?”

“I’m a pearl.”

She rolled her eyes, but had to grin. “Okay, okay, fine. You’re a pearl.”

It was then that her fingers grazed along the top of her gem. Bismuth tried not to shiver as she slowly traced the rectangular outline, careful to skim over the protrusions of the device. Then she dipped a fingertip _inside_ , and before she could snap at her to _stop fucking DOING that,_ Emerald pulled her hand back and bobbed her head, as if in greeting. “Bismuth,” she said finally.

“No, I’m a pearl.”

When her brows dug down in confusion, Bismuth chuckled and twisted her ankle in the thick cuffs, nudging her with the tips of her toes. “Hey. That was a joke. You’re supposed to laugh.”

She smiled for the first time, her lower lip ducking just under her upper teeth, and Bismuth smiled back. Even with that dental problem, she was quite pretty---and she did concede she was a sucker for a pretty face.

“I-I’ve never met a Bismuth before,” she mumbled.

“I’ve met a few Emeralds,” she said with a hint of a smirk. “None of them were as cute as you, though.”

A look of either shock or fright clouded her face, and Bismuth quickly changed the subject. “So, uh, you kind of got the short end of the stick with gem placement, huh? You ever whack your elbow on things?”

She flinched, and for a long moment she was silent. Then she lifted her arm, elbow sticking out, and tapped at the base of her gem. Bismuth wouldn’t have noticed it had she not pointed to it, but--- “Yes, once. I’m chipped now.”

“...Oh.” Well, that explained why she wasn’t in some fancy spire with servants waiting on her. “Hey, that’s not so bad. A friend of mine has a chip, and she’s mostly okay now.”

“’Mostly okay’?”

“Well, she sees and hears things she didn’t use to, but we keep an eye on her.”

Emerald had been re-wetting the towel, but she stopped mid-motion and looked up. “She got chipped, and _gained_ abilities?!”

“No, no, no. Not like that. She...” Bismuth hesitated, wondering how best to explain Crazy Lace’s... condition. “She hallucinates. Hears voices saying mean things, or sees monsters out of the corner of her eye. It drives her nuts sometimes, but we all help her through it.”

“...You didn’t toss her out,” she said with a flicker of happiness, wiping the grime from the setting of her gem.

Warmth bloomed in her belly when she thought of her friends---stars, her wonderful, beloved friends, who were probably on their way to save her right now. Or... at least, so she hoped. “Nope. We Crystal Gems stick together, through thick and thin.”

“Crystal gems...” She said it carefully, as if testing the way the words felt in her mouth. Still swabbing about her outer facets, Emerald moved her hand to the side, and the edge of her finger brushed over Bismuth’s exposed nipple. With a cry of alarm, she dropped the cloth and jumped back, her hands over her mouth and her cheeks burning. “You’re _naked?!_ ”

She looked down at what little chest she actually had, then back up. “You’re just noticing this now?”

She fumbled for her rag, nervously biting at her cuticles. She looked positively _mortified_. “I. Um. I d-don’t process things the same way other gems do... M-my chip, I...”

“Ah, I see.” She’d heard of something similar happening with Sapphires; one of the reasons for their scarcity was that so many were falling ill to some awful contagion. Mercifully, the infected wouldn’t have been able to see the chipper coming. Again, Bismuth smiled down at her, this time with sympathy. “No problem being a little slow.”

“How---how _dare_ you!” she shouted. True rage distorted her pretty face, for a moment making it ugly. “I am not SLOW!”

Surprised such a delicate gem could hold that much anger inside her, Bismuth tried to offer an apology, but she’d apparently insulted her into a huff. Emerald spent the next ten minutes with her mismatched lips pressed together, angrily scrubbing down Bismuth’s body. She still paused when she heard a hiss of pain, but had stopped asking about her wounds. It wasn’t until she was on her knees, cleaning her legs, when she spoke again.

Her hand touched at the stickiness on the inside of her thigh, and the discontent melted from her face, turning to bewilderment. “What’s this?”

Bismuth’s gut clamped up with a sick lurch. About a day and a half into her imprisonment, one of the five quartzes who’d been tasked to get her to talk had thought up a different method of torture, one that was as enjoyable for them as it was humiliating for her. Each one of them hooting and jeering as they lined up to take their turn... that had been one of the hardest hits to her pride. It was bad enough they’d left it inside her, bad enough she’d had to feel it sludging out of that new wound, and now this little handmaid of theirs had to pretend to be coy? “Oh, what do you think?! I don’t care how chipped you are--- even a Ruby would be able to figure out what that is.”

She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh. Oh no,” she said in muted horror. “Oh _no._ ”

“Yeah.” She didn’t care that Emerald was nearly face-to-face with her crotch at this point. Fine. Let her see. Let her look at what they did.

“T-they shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered as she hugged herself. “That’s wrong, it’s so wrong...”

“They’re torturers, ‘pearl’. Did you expect them to be courteous?”

“But that’s what I’m for!” she cried. There were actual tears in her eyes. “They should have just come to me instead! They shouldn’t have done that to you!”

That gave her pause. Emeralds weren’t known for their strength, and their usual life of leisure left many of them soft and wilting. But this one, serving as a pearl for an entire barracks... most upper-crusts would have been begging for the chipper by now. This one had to be made of tougher stuff. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she shakily wetted the towel and held her hand out, a surprising pout of distress on her lips. “I... I need to clean you, so I’ll have to touch you there. Are you ready?”

“No! I, um, no.” She wanted to press her legs together, but even if they hadn’t been shackled apart she knew it would be pointless. If anything, it would make the pain worse. “Just... give me a minute.” Then, as quiet as she’d ever been, she added “...Please.”

Emerald put her hand down, and she waited. Bismuth took a few deep breaths, and since it was the first time she’d done so since she’d been shackled to the dungeon wall, she noticed that Emerald had been right---she stank. The whole room was filled with the reeking of blood and come and sweat and agony. She wasn’t sure why noticing her own smell embarrassed her. Gads, _everything_ about this was embarrassing; she’d give anything right now to be somewhere else, and it wasn’t the first time her mind had tried to flee from her body. She tried to think of happier times, back to her friends, how overjoyed they’d be when--- _if_ \---they saw her again; she kept trying to push the more recent, grim memories from her mind, but she did linger a moment, relishing recalling the time one of her rapists had leaned in to give her a sarcastic kiss... and she’d bitten the bitch’s nose right off. That had earned her two black eyes and four broken fingers, but it was worth it!

She could feel an impish grin tugging at her mouth when she remembered the panic her little rebellion had caused. “Okay,” she finally said. “I’m ready.”

Emerald was very gentle, keeping one hand on Bismuth’s knee and rubbing her soothingly every time she tensed up. When it was pointed out to her that the water was starting to look murky, Emerald retrieved a fresh cloth and turned to the other bucket. It had cooled considerably in the time it had been sitting there, but the cold water felt like a relief---Bismuth was still burning, partly from pain, partly from the shame of it. She’d never had to be bathed before, let alone in such an intimate way, and she’d just _met_ this gem...

But Emerald didn’t complain, and she didn’t comment, not on anything she saw, even though it was right in front of her. She asked her several times if she felt clean yet, and was patient when Bismuth kept telling her ‘no’. To be honest, she wanted to grab the cloth out of her hands and scrub her skin raw, but she couldn’t. And she couldn’t ask _her_ to do that, either. She supposed she’d have to make do, and, in some strange way, having that disgusting sludge swept off her body in such a gentle manner felt almost like a blessing.

After awhile, Emerald began to hum. It was a simple little tune that she couldn’t quite carry, but it was sweet, and Bismuth could almost feel herself relaxing. She just kept washing her, always considerately keeping the cloth between her hand and Bismuth’s more sensitive areas, and when the water was starting to run out, she turned the hum into lyrics:

“ _Etsi infirmum est scintilla / Est in tenebris lumen..._ ”

Bismuth sighed. She didn’t understand the odd, clipped-sounding language, but Rose had once told her that music was the universal tongue. She began to bob her head to the rhythm.

“ _Ab imo pectore, dico / Dulcis est vita, quod amor c---_ ”

“HEY!”

She cried out, leaping to her feet and knocking over her bucket. A scowling mercenary was slouching in the doorway---the one who’d been de-nosed just the day prior. The one who’d actually _sobbed_ before she poofed back into her gem. Bismuth grinned maliciously at her and snapped her teeth a few times, and was more than a little satisfied when she saw a hint of fear flicker in her eyes.

“What the fuck is taking you so long?!” she barked.

“I...” Emerald was hunched, arms pulled to her chest, and for a moment Bismuth wanted to scoop her up and whisper reassurances in her ears. “S-she was filthy. You l-left a mess...”

The quartz eyed her up and down. “She looks clean to me.”

“I’m almost done,” she mumbled. “She still has dried semen all over her, um, hair, and I haven’t done the internal yet. You don’t want to have to feel that, or smell that, do you?”

She smirked. “See? I knew you’d be a good little pearl. Always looking out for your higher-ups.” She brought a claw to her teeth and picked at them, still looking down at Bismuth’s naked body, but never back up to her eyes. “Say, you wanna have a go at her, too?”

“NO!” She realized she’d said it too hastily, and so restated: “No, thank you, Toya. Y-you all are enough for me.”

“Right. Good answer.” She picked Diamonds-knows-what out of her teeth, examined it a moment, then flicked it aside. “We had a brawl in the cubby-room again, and it’s not going to clean itself up. Finish getting _that thing_ presentable, and move it!”

She forced herself to stand up straight and flashed the Diamond salute. “Yes, m-ma’am.”

They both waited until the footsteps pounded away down the hall, and Emerald let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

Bismuth ran her tongue around her mouth, tracing over the cuts gashing at her gums; just having to look in Toya’s cruel face sent a dull throb deep in her sex. “You’re... um... not really going to do an internal, are you?”

“Oh, stars, no, I was just trying to buy some time.” She put a hand to her chest and tapped it a few times, as if trying to calm down a heartbeat she didn’t have. Her voice was stilted and worried: “Bismuth, p-please try to stay strong. I-I’m sure your friends will find you soon.”

“Hey. Come here.”

She tilted her head forward, and gasped when Bismuth did the same, rubbing their noses together. She wanted to pull her into a hug, but this was as close as she could come to touching her back. “Get yourself out of here, okay?”

“Yes, I’m about to leave, I just need to get the buckets---”

“No, I mean out of this barracks!” she hissed, hoping her words wouldn’t carry down the hall. The concern she felt for this dainty gem surprised her deeply. “Get out! You gotta get out! Wait til they’re distracted, and then just run!”

Her face went pale, and she quickly shook her head, scooping up her buckets and the support pole. “No. No, Bismuth, I-I can’t. I’m chipped---I c-couldn’t make it out there on my own. Y-you have n-no idea...”

“But---”

After hefting the pole back on her shoulders, she gently touched their noses again, so close she could’ve stolen a kiss. Her soft breath ghosted over Bismuth’s lips as she murmured _“Goodbye.”_

She was already at the door when Bismuth found her voice again. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier!”

She turned, confused.

“Look, I have nothing against gems with chips,” she began. “And I shouldn’t’ve called you slow. But, hey, if you are, own it! Be proud of what makes you unique!” The next stupid words came out before she could stop them: “Some of my best friends are idiots, and you’re way faster than them!”

Emerald strode up to her, that same fury on her face, and stopped when she was only an inch away. “Bismuth, look at me. Look at my eyes.”

She couldn’t help but smile. The overbite was cute, but this? She was cross-eyed, too! That was just adorable.

She was about to say something half-flirtatious about how her eyes looked like gleaming cabochons, but it dried up in her mouth. Something was bothering her. Something about those eyes. They were so soft and unfocused...

...and not at all on hers. In fact, they weren’t on _anything_.

It clicked. Why Emerald had walked so carefully into the room, measuring her footsteps. Why she didn’t notice her nudity. Why she didn’t identify her gem until she touched it. Why she was a barracks pearl in a grimy frock, not a noble gem in regal regalia.

“I. Am. BLIND!” she said with a quiet anger. “Who’s the idiot now?”

Bismuth had to admit she had no comeback for that.

 

~

“Look at you, all squeaky-clean.”

The quartz she’d come to know as Hawky was pacing in front of her, slowly and deliberately. They kept eye contact as she did so---her face twisted in a smirk, Bismuth’s cold and stoic. “Our little pearl did a good job. You’re not half as repulsive as the last time I saw you.”

“What a coincidence. I was about to say the exact opposite to you.”

Hawky tramped towards her and smacked her across the face, which stung at the gaping cavity where her molar had been. “You wanna flap your gums, you ugly cunt? Then tell us where the rebel base is!”

She horked onto the floor. “Check up your ass! Maybe you’ll find it there!”

She seized her captive’s thumb between her fingers. Bismuth gritted her teeth and tried to prepare herself, but she still shuddered when the knuckle was bent backwards, still screamed when it broke with a sickening ‘pop’. “Tell me!”

Bismuth panted as blood-tinged drool slid from her lips. She tried to reassure herself with the knowledge she only had three digits left to break. It... didn’t help. She could only imagine what other things they’d do to her once they ran out of fingers. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

The next few punches barely even registered. Hawky was the one in charge of her torture, but she wasn’t nearly as bright as she gave herself credit for---her repertoire seemed to be limited to hitting, bone-breaking, and raping. In the few restful moments between her ‘sessions’, Bismuth had kept herself entertained by thinking up ways she’d torture _them_ if she ever got the chance, and she’d surprised herself with her own until-then buried sadism.

“You just tell us,” Hawky said, right up in her face, her puffy breath all hot and sour, “And we’ll let you go. This can be over as soon as you want it.”

“Right, you’ll just let me go, free as a bird. And I’m Yellow fucking Diamond herself.”

Another slap. “Don’t you disrespect her name!”

Bismuth leaned her head as far forward as it could go and tried to get at her with her teeth, but her tormentor had the foresight to pull herself out of range. Apparently she wanted to hang onto her nose. “Fuck you! I’ll call her a dirty, cock-sucking whore if I want to!”

She knew that was a mistake as soon as the words left her lips. Slamming the back of her skull against the stone wall, she screwed her eyes shut and gulped the howl back down her throat when she felt three hard, raspy fingers bludgeon themselves inside her. “You do that,” Hawky snarled as she hooked and twisted them, scraping along the lesions that hadn’t yet had the time to heal. “You do that and I’ll tear you in half.”

There were so many retorts she could have shot back, but her rational mind was somewhere else---half clouded in some muddied fog, half ringing so hard she could see flashing pinpricks of hot, white light behind her eyelids. Hawky was fingering her with one hand, the other lewdly squeezing her breast, and for a horrible moment Bismuth wished she could just shatter right then and there and be _done_ with this. She tried as hard as she could to hold her face in a mask of indifference, but below it all was the constant, silent, internal screaming of _NO NO NO NO NO!_ Not again! She’d just started to feel like she was regaining some _tiny_ fraction of her former dignity! No, please no, not again, not AGAIN!

Hawky pushed her head so she was facing away and ran her slimy tongue up the ridge of her neck. She chuckled when yanking her claws away made her captive yelp, and paused to feel around through the thick pubic curls, toying at her discoloured lips. “Are you giving in?” she said huskily. “You feel wet. Are you starting to enjoy this?”

Bismuth just wheezed. Even through the sparks of panic stabbing at her when she heard the quartz’s uniform disappear with a glimmer, she repeated to herself, over and over, like a sullen mantra: _Think of something else. Think of something else. Just think of something ELSE!_

Steeling herself, she tried to ignore the prodding she felt just underneath her clit and refocused. She thought of everyone back home. She thought of Crazy Lace telling her stupid, pun-riddled jokes, and how Biggs would either laugh or groan, depending on how awful they were. She thought of Snowflake, and how Rose had been working on coaxing her out of her adorable shell of shyness. And, of course, Garnet... and Pearl, sweet Pearl---

_What would they think of you now, huh?_ came some dismal voice in the murkier depths of her mind. _Would they be proud of you? Would they like to see you breaking under this bitch’s body?_

...And her concentration splintered.

_She... she’s inside me,_ she thought, her eyes rolling up into their sockets as she choked on the pain, helplessly sucking salty tears between her clenched teeth. Humiliation quaked through her body as she heard her mind screaming out _Help me, help me, oh, please, someone **help me!**_

Dimly, she could hear her rapist laughing, and she gurgled on her own injured moans. As much as she kept trying to summon her friends’ smiling faces in her head, they were swept away darkly, time and time again, whenever she felt another thrust, heard another grunt of pleasure. How hideous. She was being penetrated inside both body and brain, now.

“You like that, huh? Do you like it like that?” With the hand that was still sticky with her blood and slick, she cupped her breast in a mockery of affection. “Mm, ‘cause _I_ like it. You got a nice snug cunt, you know that?”

“Go to hell!”

She pinched her nipple and rolled it around under her thumb. “You should be thanking me, you ungrateful sow. You’re ugly as sin---this is the only way you’d get a good fuck, isn’t it?”

She kept talking, kept jabbing insults at her, but they just became background noise to the stinging that pealed up her body like a broken bell. All at once, she could feel everything and nothing; it was like something inside her was starting to become disjointed.

_Am I losing it?_

At first she thought the light tapping sound was her foot trembling against the floor, but it registered that the source wasn’t coming from her when Hawky turned her head with an irritated groan. “What?!”

“Um, I, I, um...”

Oh, sweet stars above. She opened her eyes, and even with that oily palm still holding her cheek against the wall, Bismuth could see Emerald’s slim silhouette in the doorway. She could’ve cried.

“What is it?! I’m kind of in the middle of something here!”

She was standing stiffly, clearly close to paralyzed with fear, but she still managed to eke out “Um, Praz and Broo are... er... going at it pretty bad. T-they won’t listen to me when I s-say they shouldn’t---”

That seemed to catch her attention. Hawky let go of Bismuth’s face and, jutting her hips back, extricated herself from the bleeding slit she’d been assaulting. “And what business is it of yours, _pearl?_ ”

The tips of her fingers over her lips, as if embarrassed beyond belief, Emerald tilted her head away and mumbled “Th-they’re both in heat. You remember what happened last time...?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” As she shifted her uniform back on, she shot a glob of spittle into her hand and pushed her sweat-soaked hair off her face. With three huge strides she’d made her way across the room and seized Emerald by her arm, hard enough to bruise. “C’mon, move it!”

Just before she was yanked out of the door, Emerald glanced up at Bismuth, and for a split-second she could swear those sightless eyes met hers. Behind her boss’ back, she held up her unoccupied arm, and curled her thumb and index finger together in an “okay” gesture---and that’s when Bismuth realized that she’d been saved, if only for the time being.

“Thank you,” she whispered as the door thudded shut, leaving her in darkness again.

 

~

 

It was another two days before the quartzes found her too disgusting to deal with and sent Emerald in again. This time she had a satchel clutched in her teeth; after she set her pole and the buckets down, she spat it out into her hand and unwrapped it, holding it up so Bismuth could see. “Soap,” she said with a smile.

“You trying to tell me something?” she replied teasingly.

“Yes. You smell like an Amethyst’s asshole.”

She laughed, actually really _laughed_. “I didn’t think you upper-crusts knew how to talk like that!”

“I live with quartzes,” she said mildly. Bismuth leaned forward a bit and breathed in through her nostrils when Emerald began to rub the soap into a lather; under the foamy smell of tallow and ash, there was something floral.

“Lavender?” she guessed.

She smiled. “You have a good nose. Some rose petals, too.”

She tilted her head to the side, allowing Emerald to get at the crusted blood on the side of her neck. “Seems a bit swishy for quartzes.”

She spent a moment with her fingers lingering on the edges of a loc. Normally Bismuth hated it when other gems felt the need to touch her hair, but she didn’t begrudge it of this one. Despite what she’d been through, she still had a kind of innocence Bismuth found charming. “The humans gave it to us. Well, to me. I asked them for it.”

“You’ve been trading with humans?”

“If you could call it that.” She finished her face, and moved down to her shoulders. Bismuth couldn’t stop huffing in the scent; in this gritty dungeon, the simple gift of soap seemed like the sweetest thing she’d ever smelled. “The quartzes agreed to stop hunting them for sport if they plied them with goods. One of the humans took pity on me, I think, and has been giving me little gifts.” She smiled faintly. “His name is Maximus. He... he’s really kind to me.”

“Aw, that’s sweet. You have an admirer.”

She blushed, ducking her head. “Oh, no, I-I don’t think so. This one’s a male. Human males mate with other males, don’t they?”

She snickered under her breath. Honestly, she wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She’d been to Greece. She’d seen _those_ frescoes.

“Humans are much more clever than I first gave them credit for,” she said with a startlingly wicked grin. “They’ve been giving the quartzes poison!”

Bismuth would have jumped had she not been restrained. “What?!”

Emerald was giggling now, gently working the suds into the edges of her gem. “They give them barrels of something that smells sort of rotten, and tell them to drink it. And they do! They start acting very strangely, after a few. First they begin to slur their words, then they lose their coordination. After that, they usually all fall unconscious, and when they wake back up they’re terribly sick. But they keep doing it time and time again.” She bit her lips as she swished the cloth over Bismuth’s breasts. “They’re not very bright. I think it will kill them eventually.”

“No it won’t,” she said, eyeing her hand as it passed over her chest. “Gems can’t die from alcohol poisoning.” That certainly explained why some of them had whined about how loud her screams were, and the whiff of something nasty she’d caught on the breath of that big one who liked to scratch.

“...Oh,” she said, disappointed.

Emerald began to talk about the humans and how funny she thought they were, but Bismuth was only lending half her attention. Something was beginning to bubble away in her mind. _’They usually all fall unconscious...’_

“Even if that poison won’t kill the quartzes, I still like that they drink it,” she mused as she got to her knees. “It’s the only time they leave me alone. And I got to see two of them wet themselves!”

“Uh, no, you didn’t ‘see’ anything. You’re blind as a bat.”

She hesitated as she dipped the diminishing sliver of soap back into the water. “It’s a figure of speech, Bismuth.” Then, for some reason, she felt the need to add “And bats aren’t blind. They use echolocation, but they can see.”

Even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to tell, she grinned down at her. “It’s a figure of speech, Emmie.”

She froze, her foggy eyes going as wide as she’d ever seen them, and Bismuth wondered if she’d pushed it too far. Nicknames were for friends, comrades---stars, not a barracks ‘pearl’ who was scrubbing the damned spend from your legs. But then she smiled, bringing the soap up to her face and breathing in deeply.

“No one’s given me a name before,” she mumbled, rubbing her fingers over the bubbles. “I was always called by my caste, or my facet, or... well, at first it was ‘Your Purity’, and now it’s ‘hey, whore’.”

“That’s some fall from grace, huh?” She watched as Emmie moved to her stomach, and not for the first time, felt that flutter of pride inside her when she thumbed over her thick muscles, a look of quiet awe on her face.

“I like ‘Emmie’,” she said shyly.

Bismuth could feel an unexpected surge of heat going over her face, so she coughed and tried to shift the conversation to something less intimate. “Hey, can I ask you something? About being blind?”

“Of course.”

She wasn’t sure if this was appropriate, but... “What was the last thing you ever saw?”

Her smile faded slightly. “My Pearl.”

Bismuth nearly choked. “You had a Pearl?!”

“Yes. All Emeralds have them.” The cloth moved down, and just as she was about to start wetting her pubic hair, a look of alarm shot her eyebrows up and she turned her face to Bismuth’s, cheeks flushed. “Oh, I---I never---I never, ever did _that_ to her! I never made her do that!”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s true!” She clutched at her calf, and put her head on her strong thigh, trying to keep her eyes pointed towards where she could hear the voice emanating from. “She was so afraid of me at first, I just couldn’t bring myself to harm her. I never wanted her to suffer. Not even a harsh word when she made a mistake. And... she repaid me in kind.” She sighed, leaning into Bismuth’s warm skin. “She tried to catch me when I fell. Her worried face was the last thing I saw before I chipped. Once I realized what had happened, I told her to run. I didn’t want her to have to escort me to the chipper, and then be put in a second-hand store herself, or to be sold off to the highest bidder.” She pulled her arms around herself and shuddered at the thought. “But she said she wouldn’t abandon me in my time of need.”

Bismuth gaped at her. She’d had a feeling this little gem had some good inside her, but to be so voluntarily kind to a Pearl, when she’d been so spoiled, having had everything just handed to her without an ounce of hard work, was... well, it was something she hadn’t come to associate with the elites.

Her eyes were crossing again. Bismuth wasn’t sure if it was an emotional reaction, or if she just couldn’t keep them aligned when they had nothing to look at. “It was her idea to send me here.”

“That... doesn’t sound very kind.”

“No, no, it was a wonderful idea. Smuggling a doomed gem off Homeworld isn’t an easy task, but she went above and beyond, just for me. She knew this quartz, they were... friends, I suppose? And my Pearl owed her a favour.” She licked her lips. “So she gave them... me.”

“I stand by my previous statement.”

She was beginning to look upset, but it was more on the edge of irritation than sadness. “I would have been shattered if it wasn’t for her. And in return for her gift, she was taken care of.”

“She threw you to the wolves!” she shrieked, not caring whether or not Emmie would understand the idiom. “You’ve been living a damned nightmare, and it’s her fault!”

“Bismuth,” she said firmly, “Which would you prefer? Being abused but alive, or dead?”

“The... the former,” she answered, glad that Emmie couldn’t see her blush. That very dilemma had entered her head a few times, and she was too ashamed to admit that she’d very briefly considered the latter.

It was inconsiderate. She shouldn’t have allowed herself that weakness. She’d only been here a week, and Emmie---a much smaller, much more fragile gem---had been dealing with them for _years_.

She took a few breaths to calm herself, but decided an apology at this point would be too awkward. “What happened to your Pearl?” she said as she tried to dust the nasty memories from her mind.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said as she worked her way between her thighs. “I hope she’s somewhere safe. Um, are you ready?”

“Yeah, just get it over with.”

The quartz lackeys seemed to be getting bored with her, and only a few had taken their turns this time. There was less blood, less come to wash up.

“What... are they trying to get you to say?” Emmie asked her quietly as she gently dabbed her cloth up against her sex.

“They...” It was so hard to speak when she was being touched like that. A tender touch it was, and so considerate, but she still felt a jarring kind of horror inside of her. “They want to know where the rebel base is.”

She paused. “Are you going to tell them?”

She’d been poofed by them, which had been enough of an embarrassment. But then she’d been strapped to a wall and hooked up to some infernal device that jabbed at her gem every time she tried to use her powers. She’d been beaten. She’d had her fingers broken. She’d had a tooth pulled out. Then, stripped naked. Then raped, over and over and over and _over_ again. But she still had pride in her words. “No. Those bitches can shatter me first.”

“You are very strong,” Emmie murmured.

“I’m... not strong,” she said, surprised at herself. “I’m just very protective of my friends.”

She returned her rag to the water and let the last flaky bits of soap sink to the bottom. “Friends...”

She’d said it so wistfully that it jogged something in Bismuth’s memory. “Hey, why did you duck in and save me the other day?”

Idly drifting her fingertips through the sudsy water, she replied “Well... it _was_ true. Praz and Broo don’t know how to control themselves when---”

“Knock it off, you know what I meant!” she said, a bit harsher than intended. “You didn’t have to do that. I mean... I’ve done nothing for you.”

“Don’t say that.”

She looked up at her chained, broken hands. “Come on, I’ve just been trussed up to this wall like a damn tapestry, and you’ve done all the work!”

She was blushing, pushing her hands back and forth in front of her. “I... um... it wasn’t...”

As nasty as Bismuth knew her temper could be, she was usually in good control of it---but a week’s worth of grief and misery had shredded her resolve to its limits. “Stop it! Stop trying to be a martyr! Why do you care?! You have _no reason_ to care about me!!”

A flick of spittle shot from her mouth and landed on the side of Emmie’s cheek, but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t even wipe it away. Instead, she calmly picked up her support pole, and as she was hooking the buckets back onto the ends, she said in a voice so low it was barely audible: “Bismuth... you didn’t talk to me all brown-nosed like I was an elite you could curry favour with. You didn’t condescend to me like I was a pearl.” She must have predicted the interruption to come, and quickly held up a finger to shush her. “When you found out I couldn’t see, you didn’t treat me as... damaged goods. And... you gave me a name.” A tight fist on her chest, she turned her head to the floor and murmured “You... you _startled_ me. For the first time in my entire life... someone spoke to me as an equal.”

In the silence that followed, she ducked her head and hefted the pole onto her shoulders, then rose back up, drumming her fingers on the wood. The slight smile on her face suggested she could sense the shocked look on Bismuth’s face without needing to see it. “And treating you as kindly as I can is... well, I suppose it’s my way of thanking you.”

She turned to leave, but then hesitated when something occurred to her. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, her words coming out clumsily, “I---uh---I-I know this might not be the best time for this, but... may I a-ask you a favour?”

Bismuth had to open and close her mouth a few times before she was able to speak again. “Oh, what the hell, sure.” She rapped a heel against the wall, rattling her fetters. “I gotta say, I’m pretty curious as to what you think I’ll be able to do here.”

Her face had paled, and she chewed on her lower lip, her eyes drifting around. “If---- _when_ your friends come to save you... will you... um...” Her voice dipped in cadence, down into a tone of such hushed shyness that at first Bismuth wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly.

“...W-will you t-take me with you?”

To her surprise, something inside her fluttered. Was she serious? Would that _work?_ Getting herself out seemed impossible enough, but to sneak two prisoners out at the same time? Emeralds were the elite caste who’d been responsible for sending fleet after fleet of Homeworld soldiers down to ravage the planet---so how could she possibly explain to her friends that she, _of all gems_ , was sticking her neck out for an upper-crust? How could she tell them it wasn’t hypocrisy on her part without spilling all the horrific, humiliating details of what the two of them had been through down in this dungeon?  
She shook the thoughts from her head. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Emmie had been a beacon in this darkness. Though it was thoughts of her treasured friends that ultimately kept her from breaking, Emmie’s visits had restored her spirits as much as her dignity. The fluttering inside her stilled, and she realized with an almost contented kind of certainty that sticking her neck out for this little gem was the least she could do.

“Of... course,” she said, and when the hesitation registered a little worry on Emmie’s face, she repeated herself with all the strength she could force: “Of course, of course I will.”

“Really?”

She nodded. Even though it wouldn’t be seen, it wasn’t a useless gesture---in her position, it was the closest she could come to shaking hands to seal the deal. “Yes, Emmie. That’s a promise.”

She blinked, and tears trickled down her cheeks. “T-thank you. Thank you so much.”

“You’re gonna love my friends, and they’re gonna love you right back.” She smiled, thinking of how the introductions would go. Biggs, never one to let her tiny stature or others’ need for personal space hold her back, would probably grab her and twirl her around. Clueless Snowflake would corner her and pester her with questions until she was rescued. Pearl would either read to her, or figure out a way for Emmie to read on her own. And Rose would walk her around outside, guiding her hands down to different plants and creatures and explaining what they were. The whole scenario was so comforting to her that it felt as cleansing as the soap.

“I wish we could have met under different circumstances,” Emmie said quietly. “But... I’m still glad we met, regardless.”

“Me too. You keep yourself strong, y’hear?”

“I always do,” she replied with a tear-streaked smile. “I’ll s-see you again soon.”

Bismuth snickered. “Honestly, I’m glad you can’t. It’s not often I meet gems when I’m stark-fuckin’-naked.”

To her complete shock, Emmie took a hand off her pole, brought it down to the top of her frock---and then yanked it down to her waist. “Feel better now?”  
She was laughing as she left, closing the door on Bismuth’s choked gasp of surprise.

_Well, well, well..._ she thought. _I guess the thought of those perfect tits will be another thing I can add to my list of things I hope I’ll see again!_


	2. Bismuth Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's painful, losing one's mind. But it can also be rewarding.

 

 

The next time Emmie came to visit she _ran_ into the room, unencumbered by her buckets and with a dark look of fear on her face. Bismuth began to speak, but she quickly hushed her.

“It’s going to be bad,” she hissed as she plunged a hand down her neckline, fumbling around for something tucked into the front of her dress. “Brace yourself. They know they’re running out of time, and they’re _not_ happy.”

Part of her wanted to ask how it could possibly get any worse, but she’d learned a long time ago not to tempt fate. Emmie found what she’d been rummaging for, and pulled out what looked like a small piece of an ancient, flaky scroll. As she opened her mouth to query, Emmie reached forward, found her mouth, and shoved it in.

“Eat it!” she said as her fingertips lingered on Bismuth’s split lip. “Chew on it as much as you can, and suck down the sap. Then swallow it. Please! They’ll kill me if you spit it out and they see it on the floor!”

Even though it tasted like a mouthful of muck, she tried to do as she was told, keeping it on the uninjured side of her mouth; her question came out as “Whuff iff id?”

“Willow bark. It helps numb pain. The, the quartzes don’t care if I use it, but they’ll tear me to _pieces_ if they know I gave it to you!”

She pulled on the stringy bark, gagging a little as the acrid sap went down her throat. She was eyeing Emmie’s face carefully; the raw terror she saw there was starting to ping at her already-frazzled nerves. “Whaff are they gonna---”

“I don’t know!” she said desperately as she squeezed her shoulders. “Just, please, _please_ try to stay strong. C-can you promise me that?”

Before she could answer, Emmie’s hands flew up to her face. She winced when her delicate fingers brushed over scabs and bruises, and moved the bark to the inside of her cheek so she could speak clearly. “Hey! Take it easy, I haven’t healed yet!”

“I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, flitting her fingers around until she found the crease lines where her smile used to be.

“It’s fine, just don’t poke so hard,” she mumbled. “What are you trying to do, figure out what I look like?”

“These are _fingers,_ not _eyes,_ ” she said bluntly. “I have no idea what you look like, and touching your face won’t help that. I was just trying to find your mouth.”

Emmie withdrew her hand, and Bismuth actually jolted in her restraints when she leaned in and pressed their lips together. Stars, she felt so _soft_... Bismuth didn’t know whether or not it would be appropriate to kiss back, to try to caress with her tongue, so she just hung there against the wall, closing her eyes and breathing in her strange scent through a quick, frightened, overbitten little kiss. It was enough to summon stinging tears to her eyes. And when she pulled away, Emmie looked like she was about to cry, too.

“Hey, don’t you... don’t you worry about me,” Bismuth said through the lump in her throat. “I’ll be fine. Save your tears for someone who really nee---”

But a tear did manage to escape when the door banged against the far wall. Instead of jumping to attention, Emmie just slumped forward despondently, her sweaty forehead against Bismuth’s collarbone.

“ _She’s going to kill me,_ ” she moaned under her breath.

The quartz was shifting from foot to foot, her short, spiky hair all ruffled up like porcupine quills. “What the hell are _you_ doing in here?!”

A quiet whimper of fear burbled out of her shaking body; Bismuth could feel it reverberating in the facets of her gem, and she defiantly glared at Hawky over the top of Emmie’s head. “Not that it’s any of your _fucking_ business”---she knew this was not the time for puns---“but she was just curious.”

“Curious?”

“Yeah.” She decided to put a spin on what she’d just been told. “She’s never met a Bismuth before. She wanted to know what I look like, so she came in and touched my face. That’s all, so get the damn firecracker out of your ass.”

She smirked when the stripes on the torturer’s face twisted around her frown. “What...? She’s never done that with any of us.”

As discreetly as she could, Bismuth gulped the remainder of the wood down her throat. She knew that would have to come out at some point, but right now she had more important things to worry about. “Well maybe it’s because she already knows how ugly you are.”

Hawky pretended she couldn’t be bothered to let that get to her. She grabbed Emmie by the elbow, her ragged nails jabbing right under the chipped notch in her gem; she whipped her around, no concern on her face when she heard the cry of pain. “Is that true?”

Bismuth snorted. “Don’t ask her, she’s blind. But you can take my word that you’re about as nice to look at as a baboon’s slimy ass.”

She ignored her prisoner and shook Emmie instead. “I asked you a question, pearl! Is it true? Were you trying to ‘look’ at her?”

“Y...yes,” she said feebly as she gnawed her lip, her hands curled into crooks from the aching in her gem. “Yes, I... I didn’t have anything assigned to me, so I-I thought I’d just pop in, and t-try to see what she...”

With a violent jerk, Hawky tossed her to the rough, pitted ground, and when her chin scraped on the floor Bismuth shouted before she could stop herself. “ _Hey!_ Leave her alone!”

“Get out of here,” the quartz growled, and Emmie scrambled to her feet, running towards the exit with her hands extended in front of her, blood dribbling down her neck. Bismuth was so focused on watching her leave that she didn’t notice what her tormentor was holding until she was addressed again: “Look here, you bitch.”

Bismuth did, and her eyes flicked down to her hand. Clenched in her burly fist was something Bismuth didn’t recognize---although it had the overall shape of a gem destabilizer, it was shorter, fatter, and instead of two spiky points it was topped with something tulip-shaped... but no less vicious. Hawky caught her staring and grinned.

“Never seen a splitter before, huh?” Squeezing the shaft, she forced the sharpened tips to snap together with tinny clacking noises.

“N...o,” she said hesitantly. Then, feigning confidence: “But I’m not too impressed. The welding on the handle looks really sloppy, and the casting is---”

Hawky scowled as she advanced. “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

She flashed her a wide, if gap-toothed, smile. “I thought you wanted me to talk.”

“Oh, you’ll talk,” she hissed, lowering her weapon. “You’ll talk alright.”

She was right.

Whoever designed the ‘splitter’ had to have her name on a list somewhere. It was absolutely barbarous, and within five minutes Bismuth was openly sobbing for the first time since the beginning of her torture, big fat tears gushing down her face and broken pleas gibbering from her lips. Her muscles convulsed, her toes curled into cramps, and she thrashed her head about, screaming out for her friends, to the stars, to the galaxies above, hell, even to the Diamonds---but no one answered. For the first time, it dawned on her just how utterly _alone_ she was, and with a broken kind of despair she actually felt something snap off from inside of her, deep inside her mind, her soul.

“Please, please...”

It twisted. She screamed. It twisted again. She screamed again.

When Hawky pulled it back out of her flesh, moving to jab it forward into a new spot, Bismuth finally dropped her chin to her chest and wailed. “Okay! Okay! I can’t take it! Stop, please stop!”

She prodded at the lacerated skin where it had just been. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I’ll talk!” she bawled, her voice almost as ragged as her hide. She couldn’t bear to look at the damage it had done. “I don’t care, I don’t _care_ , I’ll tell you whatever you want! Just please, _please_ stop!!”

With a slow-spreading smile twisting her features, she rolled the shaft around in her hand, watching a drop of blood as it trickled around the copper petals. “I must have something in my ears. I don’t think I heard you.”

“Stop,” she sobbed. “Stop, please.”

She sheathed her weapon in her belt, but not before brushing off a smear of blood and then licking her thumb. Chuckling, Hawky sarcastically patted her swollen cheek with sticky fingers. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Bismuth just moaned. Dark blood was spattering the floor, and she twisted her feet to keep from stepping in her own puddle.

“Now,” Hawky said lowly as she lifted her prisoner’s head, her hand fisted in her locs, “Tell me: Where. Is. The. Rebel. Base?”

She licked the slaver from her lips, but couldn’t bring herself to meet the quartz’s eye. “I... I’m not g-good with directions...”

Her calloused hand moved down to her belt, but before she could retrieve the splitter Bismuth blurted “Get me a map!!”

“A map?”

“Yes. A map. I’ll... I’ll draw you the way there.” She squeezed her eyelids together, all gummy and sore from the weeping. “A quill and something flat to write on. I-I’ll do it, dammit.”

“You got it, babe.”

Every inch of her skin was quivering, and she allowed herself a few more disgraceful tears as Hawky sauntered out of the dungeon, laughing. Her head was hanging low, weighted down with agony and shame, but she did notice something out of the corner of her eye---Emmie’s distinctive shadow being cast into the room.

“Bismuth...”

“Go away,” she said hoarsely.

Her feet shuffled around as she faltered half-in and half-out of the doorway. “P-please don’t---”

“Go _away!!_ ”

With a quiet noise deep in her throat, she did so... but Bismuth didn’t hear any footsteps. For someone who was used to relying on her hearing, Emmie apparently didn’t realize how obvious her lingering would be.

Another hot tear burned at her cheek. It didn’t matter. She knew what was coming, and couldn’t bring herself to care if Emmie witnessed it.

When Hawky came back, she spent a moment running her palm over Emmie’s shivering body before returning her attention to her captive. Each ominous clap of her feet against the floor made Bismuth shudder. She stopped a hair’s breadth away, eyeing her bound, busted hands. “Are you left- or right-handed?”

“Yes.”

The look of confusion made her groan in irritation. “I’m ambidextrous, okay? Just let my right hand loose. It has the fewest broken fingers.”

The quartz reached for her cuffs, but hesitated as she shapeshifted her index finger into a key. “You make _one_ move to hit me, and I swear to the Diamonds---”

“Right. Yeah. I get it. Just get this over with, willya?”

She slid her makeshift key into the lock, and when the fetter fell away from her wrist Bismuth’s arm flopped down to her side, weak and cramping and spiking with pain. She sucked air in through her teeth as she shook the twinges from her abused muscles, and finally let her gaze drift to the quill being waved under her nose.  
It was difficult to pick it up, but she managed to pinch it between the two fingers that had been left untouched. Hawky held the clipboard up to her, and with a dejected sigh, Bismuth began to scratch ink to the map. “Listen carefully.”

“To what?”

“An exclamation mark means rough terrain. An upside-down ‘V’ is a hill or a mountain, and a squiggly line is a river. I’ll mark the rebel base with an ‘X’.”

“Good, good,” Hawky purred. “I knew you’d come around eventually.”

“Bite me.”

“Nice idea, but I’ll save that for later,” she said with a laugh. Then, as a nasty thought occurred to her: “If you do a good enough job with this map, we may just conscript you. Every troop needs a ‘smith, you know?”

“I’d rather suck the smegma from your greasy little dick.” Bismuth brought the quill to her mouth and licked the tip, re-wetting the ink. “I’m almost done. ...Here, take a look.”

“I knew you’d come around to reason. “ Hawky yanked the clipboard back, but spared a moment to stare at her prisoner before looking at the map she’d drawn. “Hey, would you like to say goodbye to your little buddies before we slaughter them? I think you’ve earned that right.”

Bismuth just watched her coldly as she let her eyes drift down to the diagram she was holding... and an eruption of hot, bursting joy surged through her when the smile splitting Hawky’s face melted away.

Written in a shaky-yet-definitive script, scrawled so hard it had ripped the paper in places, was a cheery ‘GO FUCK YOURSELF!’, complete with a smug smiley face.

The quartz’s head jerked up, her mouth agape, and Bismuth burst out laughing. “Is _that_ a clear enough direction for you, you absolute _cunt?_ ”

The clipboard cracked in two when it was smashed over her head, and she howled with laughter even through the beating that followed. Hawky smashed her heel down on her toes, breaking a few, and she laughed; she stabbed the quill into the setting of her gem, and she laughed; she clawed at her nipples and slashed her face and raped her again, and Bismuth laughed and laughed and _laughed_. She didn’t even care that this probably meant she’d become unhinged---she had no idea that losing her damn mind would be so rewarding. She was still laughing when Hawky went stumbling out of the room, pulling her pants back up; she even yelled “Bismuth, one; Homeworld, zero!” after her, and laughed until fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. Stars, it hurt, it ached at her belly, it stung at her eyes, but she laughed and laughed until she started sobbing, and laughed even through that. She realized that light could shine through even the sturdiest fortress if it had a crack---and laughed until she lost consciousness.

_Bonus illustration! You may have to scroll to see it all._

 

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hah, trying to subvert the Hollywood trope of "a blind person can tell what you look like if they touch your face" ;)
> 
> Also... phew. Bismuth hasn't lost herself, but... even if she heals, she'll never quite be the same. This is when the seeds of some new, dark ideas got been planted in her mind---especially the one that eventually got mentioned in her titular episode.
> 
> Also, I wanted to leave it to the reader's imagination exactly what "the splitter" does to a gem. Name the Medieval torture device it was based on and get a cookie!


	3. Footprints

 

Hawky had left her right hand unbound, and in the long, stretching hours that followed her visit, Bismuth had spent her time carefully pressing her digits up against her hipbone, gnashing her teeth as she tried to pop them back into place. Although she did manage to force one joint of her thumb back to normal, she otherwise had little success. Her initial attempt to pry off the blocker was even less fruitful---that searing electric shock was enough to teach her her lesson. She was starting to wonder how she’d ever get the damned thing off; the only gem she knew who could handle electricity unharmed was Garnet, and if anyone _but_ the fusion came to her rescue they’d have to somehow get her back to base without her powers, with broken toes and open wounds. Not to mention getting there _naked..._ stars, she’d been through enough humiliation. She didn’t know if she could bear another one---and in front of her friends to boot!

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice when Emmie came shuffling into the room, but her head jerked up when she heard a whimper.

“Stars, what did you _do?!_ ” she wheezed with a hand over where her heart would have been. "I've never seen Hawky so angry in my life!"

“I just gave the cunt a taste of her own medicine,” Bismuth replied, but her smile faltered when she caught a glimpse of what her... her friend?... had clutched tight in her fist. “What the hell is that?”

“It’ll make sense in a minute,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder; Bismuth wasn’t sure if it was so she could listen more carefully to the hallway outside, or just a remnant of her thousands of years of having sight. When she turned back around, her face was taut with anguish. “I c-can’t take this anymore, Bismuth. I can’t b-bear listening to you scream, I can’t bear them taking out their frustrations on me, I can’t--- _ **I just can’t TAKE it!**_ ”

A rush of heat darkened her cheeks. She hadn’t thought of how her own stubbornness might be affecting the other gem the quartzes were so fond of abusing. “I... I’m sorry, I...”

“Please be quiet,” she whispered, “Please!” And then she staggered her way up to the bound gem, her hand groping about until she found her shoulder.

“Emmie, what is---”

Her silky fingers ran up her bicep, to her forearm, then to her wrist. “Be _quiet!_ ”

Clutched between her forefinger and thumb was something that looked like a hairpin; the reality of her situation smacked Bismuth upside the head when Emmie put it to the tiny hole in the manacle holding her left arm in place. “This... this’ll take a minute.”

Her voice pinched with nervousness, Emmie began to sing that strange song again, but the tune came to a stuttering stop when something deep in the cuff clicked. It unbolted, and Bismuth had to clap both hands against the wall to keep from flopping forward, jostling her injured fingers. Under her howls of startled pain, Emmie dropped to her knees and began working her tool along Bismuth’s ankles. One by one, she shook them free, and the relief was so tremulous and staggering that she slumped down to the floor, on her hands and knees, choking. She turned her wet face up to Emmie, great wracking pangs of shock coursing through her. She’d been burning for freedom for so long, and now that it was so close, she was too paralyzed to even move.

“They’re drunk,” her saviour told her as she reached just behind the base of her thick, tufty braid. “T-that means we only have a few hours to do this.”

And she pulled out something _horribly_ familiar. It looked like the splitter. Bismuth’s ears were ringing, and she didn’t realize she was screaming until Emmie clapped a hand over her mouth. “Be quiet, _please!_ ”

Instead of putting the nefarious device’s tip to use against her body, Emmie lowered it to her gem, and after some fumbling clacked it open and closed over the stringy wires. Snip, snip, snip---within minutes she’d punctured the blocker, and it clattered to the floor by Bismuth’s knees. She fell, too—she fell even farther down, hot snot and spittle drooling down her face, her body, her neck, as she clutched at the dirty ground, free, truly _free_ for the first time in what felt like a hell of an eternity.

“It’ll take some time,” Emmie said as she groped around for her shoulder. “Give it a few minutes, and you’ll get your powers back.”

“E-E-Emm-mmie,” she stuttered as she gazed up through a searing veil of tears. Her gem was throbbing.

“I know this barracks like the back of my hand, but I don’t know the world outside,” she whispered as she kicked the blocker aside, her foot shaking. “As soon as I get you out, you’ll have to be my eyes.”

“Emmie---”

“And we’ll get you back home, okay? Just hold on, and we’ll get you back home.” She knelt down to Bismuth’s level and took her face in her hands. They were both shuddering in fear. “We’ll get you back to your friends.”

Her gem began to sting, deep and pinching and horrible, and Bismuth gagged on her spit when she felt a few of her fingers start to realign, the dull air of the dungeon filling with dry crackling noises. Oh, stars... she was healing.

“Emmie,” she rasped, “Emmie, you just get out. You find the exit, and you turn yourself North.”

Her face twisted in concern. “Alright, but you need to---”

“Emmie, I _can’t!_ ” She said it with a nauseating distress tugging at her core. “Walk North. You’ll find my friends.”

“But---”

A slimy feeling worked itself up inside her cunt, and she keened out when she felt her flesh stitch back together with a creeping tickle. “Emmie, sweetheart, listen: when you get to the door, knock three times, then pause, then once more.”

Beads of sweat were running down her temples. “Bismuth, no! No!! You have to lead me! I can’t see, I---”

“Whoever’s at the door will ask you ‘How long have you been out here?’ and you have to answer ‘Seventy-seven years’. That’s the code.”

“ _Bismuth!_ I’ll never make it! I’ll _die_ out there!”

“No you won’t. Just walk North.” She clenched her teeth as she looked up into that pretty face, trying to memorize every detail. She honestly had no idea if she'd ever see it again. “They’ll let you in, darling,” she murmured. “I promise. I _promise._ ”

“But---”

Emmie jumped back, gasping, when a gust of air blew her hair away from her cheeks. The ‘ _POOF_ ’ was almost as deafening as the sound of a brittle gem clattering to the floor.

Even though she knew how pointless it would be, she extended her arms into the empty air. “Bismuth?” she murmured. “Oh, please...”

Sinking to her knees, Emmie swept her hands around until she felt a cold, sharp corner. She pulled Bismuth’s gem up against her chest and dipped her scabbed chin down onto it, weeping quietly.

 

~

 

It was fifty-two steps to the treeline from the mouth of the cave, and she didn’t dare go any further. She’d gotten lost in the forest once, and that was once too many; it had taken almost two full, panic-filled days of slogging through the underbrush before she broke into a clearing, and the memories of slippery leaves and tree roots underfoot kept her where the ground was less treacherous. The only reason she’d come back at all was to feel for moss.

Her calm expression turned into a frown when she ran her hand around trunk after trunk, only to find moss growing all over. So much for that ‘it only grows on the North side’ nonsense. With a sigh she leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the cool bark. Well, so much for plan ‘B’. Plan ‘A’ had started well enough---she knew the barrack’s back door faced East, so all she had to do was turn on her heel and start walking. Before she did, she shapeshifted boots and placed a pebble in the right one; she knew she had a tendency to veer to that direction if she didn’t constantly correct herself, and the little pain in her foot served as a reminder. She’d headed North, just as Bismuth told her to, for a day and a half before she stumbled into some creature’s territory; although she didn’t know what it was called, she knew from its weird yelping and howling that it was the one capable of tearing humans apart, and when it took up the chase she decided not to stick around to see if it could do the same to a gem. North and all other directions were thrown to the wind as she ran for her life, and it wasn’t until she tripped and went rolling down the side of a hill that the creature left her alone. It was when she found out she was deep in a forest that she knew plan ‘A’ had been shot to shit, but at least _she_ was still intact.

No... they both were.

Despite herself, she smiled. Out here, she couldn’t risk retreating into her gem---she had someone to look out for.

Emmie turned around and ghosted her toes over the snow until she found her footprint. When she’d first found the cave she was too frightened and exhausted to try venturing more than a few paces away, but the snow had given her a way to retrace her steps, and day after day she managed to press further. She never left her makeshift hiding place for too long---she had no idea how long it would take Bismuth to reform, and didn’t want her to panic if she happened to do so alone.

She was still smiling as she hopped from footprint to footprint. The cool, wet cave wasn’t exactly cozy, so she’d removed her dress and bundled Bismuth’s gem in it. She wasn’t sure if the new outfit she’d summoned looked any good, but it was a _huge_ relief to be free from those itchy burlap rags she’d been forced to wear. This way, if Bismuth did reform while she was out, at least she’d have some clue that Emmie was nearby.

_Twenty-two, twenty-three..._ She was humming quietly to the rhythm of her footfalls, only a little guilty that it was the tune she’d learned from the humans. She’d briefly considered going to them for help, since their settlement was the only place outside the barracks she’d been to, but knew that’d be the first place the quartzes would come looking for her. They had to be _furious_ \---she hoped they wouldn’t be too hard on those fragile creatures. Oh, who was she kidding? Those bitches had probably torn their little village apart.

_Well, maybe the Crystal Gems will offer them help... if we ever make it there._

The doubt only lingered a moment as Emmie turned her face to the sky. She was honestly surprised at how long she’d managed to survive out in this bizarre, alien terrain on her own, and wondered if Bismuth hadn’t been wrong to have faith in her. A faith borne from pure desperation, of course, but it was still more faith than anyone had placed in her for years. Maybe---

Her foot dipped into a footprint and slid forward a few inches, making her thoughts come to a sick, skidding halt.

Slowly, her throat tight, she pulled her foot back, then pushed it forward again, testing the edges of the depression left in the snow. Something was wrong. This footprint was far too big.

It wasn’t hers.

Dropping to her knees, she fluttered her hands around and had to keep swallowing over and over to keep the fear from pinching her throat shut. It wasn’t an animal’s tracks, that she could tell---this came from a bipedal creature, one without paws. There were four of these huge footprints within arm’s reach, and for one desperate moment she tried to convince herself they were Bismuth’s. _Yes, that’s it! That must be it!_ she thought with what she knew was a stupid, nervous smile. _She reformed and came looking for me! That HAS to be it!_

“Please let that be it,” she murmured, even though she’d felt Bismuth’s feet, even though she _knew_ they were wider and shorter than the long imprints under her fingers.

She swallowed one last time and cocked her head, listening. The forest was still sighing in the light wind, but the chirping birds had fallen strangely silent.  
Her ears prickled---she’d heard something, soft and muffled, but with a quiet crunch of snow underneath. Someone had shifted their stance. And they weren’t that far away.

With a pinched yelp, Emmie tried to get back to her feet, but in her fear they shot out from under her and she landed in a crumpled heap, her arms protectively over her face, tears already wetting her eyelashes. She heard a familiar cackle, and the birds took to the air squalling and cawing when a weapon hit a tree trunk with a solid _THUMP_.

“ _There_ you are,” came Toya’s low, jeering voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh, so close to the end now! I really wanted to make a 'Breaking Point' pun in here, but couldn't bring myself to do it ;P
> 
> I know I'm a little heavy-handed with my metaphors, but I really like writing about a disabled gem slowly venturing further and further out of a cave... only to come face-to-face with her greatest fear. I've known a lot of people who've gone through that.


	4. Love Is Blind

Emmie tried to lift herself from the frosty ground, but her hands slipped behind her, sending her crashing back down. “T-Toya!!”

“That’s _Ms._ Toya to you, bitch,” she said with a dark laughter ringing in her voice. Her footfalls crunched in the snow as she advanced, tossing her weapon from hand to hand as she watched her captive scrabble around. “You caused quite a stir back at camp. We thought we’d lost our little pearl. Ah, ah, ah....”

As soon as Emmie got to her feet, turning to run, Toya easily swept her hook through the air with a whistle and caught her by the ankles, sending her crashing to the ground. After twirling the hilt in her palm, she sunk the apex of her weapon deep into the dirt, pinning Emmie’s shirt down with it. “Now where do you think you’re going, hm?”

Instinctively, she reached down to disengage her clothing, but cried out when she felt a rough hand wrap around her wrist. “No, no wait! It’s n-not like that! I---”

“Got to give you some credit, though,” she went on as she hefted the smaller gem up, ripping her shirt almost up to her chest. The tips of her toes were barely dusting the ground as she squirmed in Toya’s grip. “I didn’t think you had the stones to pull something like that off! And busting the informant out, too? Ha!” She shook her by the collar a few times before pulling her up close, their bodies touching, her snub nose tickling against Emmie’s. “Praz always told me you were just a dumb little cock-sock, but now I know I shouldn’t have turned my back on you.”

“I j-just got lost!” she blurted out. “I stepped too far outside and I-I g-got lost! That’s all!”

“I don’t believe that,” she hissed. “ _You_ don’t believe that! I _know_ you broke that rebel scum out!”

“No! Th-that wasn’t me! She got out on her own!”

“You left your hairpin on the floor, idiot!” Her voice dropped dangerously low, grinding in her throat like the beginning of an avalanche. “We all had our suspicions. I saw you waltzing out of that dungeon with a big, stupid smile on your face, you slut. She buttered you up like a bun, didn’t she? What did she promise to you for letting her loose?”

“I...” She gulped sour mucous down her throat over and over. “I dropped it w-when I was c-cleaning her---”

“Stop lying!”

Emmie closed her eyes, both hands fisting on top of Toya’s. She could smell her, feel the heat of her body, waves of splintered panic shooting through her like lightning. “I didn’t mean it, I-I d-d-didn’t mean to, I---”

She mewled when she felt a thumb run down her cheek, just as it had so many times before, so many other times when she’d been on her back with stale fear in her throat and fake, mawkish words whispered in her ear.

“We took you in, you ungrateful bitch. We gave you your life back. It was a _gift,_ ” she said as she let a hand drift to her neck, her collarbone, and down over her breasts, her nipples all stiffened up with fear. “It’s rude to throw away a gift, pearl. Don’t you know that?”

“Toya, T-Toya, this is just a m-misunderstanding---”

“I’m not ‘misunderstanding’ a damn thing, you little shit. _Now,_ ” Toya said evenly as she tightened her grip, “You’re going to tell me _exactly_ where that Bismuth is, and I just might restrain myself from tearing you to bits.”

“I... I don’t know!”

The Cat’s-Eye smashed her back against the trunk of a tree. “Wrong answer!”

“It’s the truth! I don’t know!” she screamed as her heels dug against the cold bark. “S-she reformed two days ago, a-and she just took off!”

“Is that so?”

Still grasping those big, rough hands, Emmie’s fingers skittered around---and she felt a wet gash running over Toya’s knuckles and down to her wrist. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth; the only other times she’d felt open wounds on the enforcer’s body, it had been after one of Hawky’s ‘punishments’. Diamonds only knew what kind of chaos had gone down when she awoke to find their prisoners gone. “Yes! Really! S-she just left me here---I have no idea which way she went!”

After a moment, Toya’s arm slowly lowered, but she didn’t let go of Emmie’s shirt. “I... see,” she drawled through her teeth. “So, have you learned your lesson yet?”

Emmie gasped a few times, still clutching to the thick wrists holding her in place, a look of confusion knitting her brows.

“I guess I have to spell it out for you then.”

She brushed her cheek against Emmie’s and lifted her hands so that her knuckles were right up under her chin. “You can’t ever---EVER!---trust a rebel,” she hissed. “They’ll just use you and abuse you and drop you on your ass the moment they can’t get anything else out of you.”

“N...no...” she whimpered. “That’s not...”

She let out a bark of laughter. “Don’t believe me? Look what that fat cunt did to you! She pegged you as a sucker the moment you walked in. She spun some pretty stories to you about the _Crystal Gems_ ”---the words spat out with pure venom---“And how they’d _never_ treat you like the whore you are. And you swallowed her bullshit with a big, open mouth.” Emmie’s finger hit the wound again and Toya sucked on her teeth. “Did she fuck you before she took off? Hm? Was it good, pearl?”

Something, some strange new feeling seared at her core, and Emmie tensed her muscles against the tree. She was so desperately afraid that her terror had tipped over the edge, tumbling into something else, some hot, raw, atavistic emotion she’d never felt before.

“My name is _EMMIE!_ ” she screamed.

Toya growled, but she didn’t seem to notice Emmie’s foot gingerly edging its way between her shins. “Are you copping an attitude with me, you worthless little cripple?”

She spat right in her face.

Toya yelped in surprise, and Emmie acted before she could think twice; the leg she’d worked between her abuser’s thighs shot up from under her, and she slammed her knee right into her groin.

She couldn’t even scream---the only noise that left her throat was a hollow huff of pain as she crumpled forward, dropping Emmie to the ground. The cold snow bit at her bare shins when she fell, but she didn’t have the chance to roll away before Toya’s heavy body flopped on top of hers. She was hacking, gagging with shock and agony as she fumbled around, and with a sick pinch of disgust Emmie realized this must have meant her member had been unsheathed and erect when she’d kicked it. She kept trying to grab at her, but her arms went swinging in the air, so she did the only thing that came to mind---she sunk her teeth into whatever soft, fleshy body part was pressed against her face.

This time Toya did scream.

“ _Cocksucker!_ ” She dug her nails into Emmie’s braid and yanked her back, sending fire running through her scalp. “You bit my tit!”

She threw her back against the tree, smashing her head so hard it rang in her ears. Emmie let out a weak gasp when she felt hands wrap around her throat so hard it cramped shut; she tried to get at Toya’s face with her fingers, scratching, poking, searching for her eyes---oh, how she so desperately wanted to gouge them out---but she just kept moving around, dodging her nails, throttling her with a growling fury.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” she snarled as she bashed her against the trunk again and again. “Do you think the Bismuth had fun chained to the wall? Do you want to know what that’s like, pearl? Do you want to know what it’s like losing your teeth and your fingers and what’s left of your worth? Because that’s what we’re going to do to you.” Her namesake sparkling slit on her gem was glowing as she pressed her thumbs to Emmie’s neck. “We’re going to chain you up. We’re going to cut off your tongue so you can’t talk back and we’re going to pull out all your teeth so you can’t bite and we’re going to slice your tendons so you can’t run away even if you do break out. We’ll nail you to the fucking wall and we’re keeping. You. There. For _ev---_ ”

The last word cut off in a short, startled splutter, and something hot and viscous sprayed across Emmie’s face. The hands at her throat weakened, and when Emmie finally opened her mouth to suck at the air, a bead of the liquid dripped onto her tongue; it was thick, and the brassy taste made her gag in horror.

Frantically, she slapped Toya’s weakening arms away from her as she spat and spat, trying to get the taste of blood out of her mouth, and in her haste the tips of her fingers grazed over the enforcer’s neck; the feel of Toya’s slick skin was expected, but the hard, warm scimitar jutting through her ruptured larynx was a surprise. Emmie whimpered---the deep recess of her brain, on some primeval level, understood what had happened, but her conscious mind was still snagging with panic. She tremulously fingered the blade as it slid back, and even under the percussive sound of Toya’s form dissipating, she heard a familiar glimmer. Shapeshifitng. The blade was changing back to a hand. It had to be.

She still had her hands up in defence when she sensed someone kneel in front of her, a shadow falling over her prone form. “Don’t hurt me!” she shrieked, her knees jutting up against her body. “I d-didn’t do anything wrong! It’s not my fault! Please, I---”

As much as she wanted to squirm away, her body went limp when two huge arms wrapped around her and pulled her close, smushing her face up against those... those ‘weird braids’.

“Ssh, Emmie,” came the sweetest voice she’d ever heard. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

She cried out, half in anguish, half in desperate delight, and began to weep, shaking so hard her teeth rattled. “S-she tried to---she tried to---she was going to---”

Bismuth pressed a kiss against her neck as she blinked away tears. “I know, Baby Girl. It’s okay, it’s okay now.”

“Don’t let me go,” she whispered as she sobbed against her soft skin. “Please, please don’t ever leave me again!”

“I won’t,” she replied, eyeing the gem lying by the roots of the tree just a few feet away. Part of her knew she should bubble it away before Toya could reform, but she’d just made a promise. “I’m never letting you go again.”

~

 

`

 

_One year later_

Emmie shouldered the door open and carried the laundry into the chamber she’d come to know so well. It had been kind of Rose to allocate a little bedroom for the two of them, and she grinned a bit when she thought over how much use they’d made of it in the past few months. These freshly-cleaned sheets were long overdue.  
She bit her lip, grinning, as she remembered the way Bismuth had nibbled at her neck just a few hours ago, her big, rough palm wandering over her belly. She’d had to literally pry herself away, giggling, and reminded her lover that she was late for her ‘class’. As loath as she was to leave that warm embrace, she’d promised Pearl she’d never miss a lesson.

She sniffed the clean bedding she was holding, and sighed. She’d been so afraid of how the Crystal Gems would treat her, but aside from a few initial misunderstandings, they’d all been so welcoming. She thought back to the day she’d finally found the rebel base, holding up Bismuth’s gem as a sign of peace; they’d put her in custody at first, agreeing that they’d keep her there til Bismuth reformed to make sure their stories matched, but Rose---that gentle, sweet-smelling gem---made sure the cell she’d be waiting in was comfortable enough, outfitting it with fluffy blankets and pillows. Garnet was the first to question her, and although she found the fusion distant and stoic, they eventually came to a friendly truce. Pearl was the next to greet her in her prison cell, heavy tomes and scrolls gathered in her arms ‘for you to read in case you get bored’; as soon as she learned of Emmie’s blindness, she’d dropped them to the floor and run out of the room, slamming the door behind her. When she finally returned some time later, she shoved a sheet of papyrus in her arms, guiding Emmie’s fingers over the series of tiny bumps she’d punctured onto its surface. Stars above, she’d gone and figured out an alphabet that could be felt instead of seen.

It brought her to tears. Never had she felt more welcome in her life.

She’d been greeted with a kiss when Bismuth finally reformed, but it was slow going for awhile after that; for two gems who had met in such a deeply visceral way, a shuddering kind of shyness had fallen over them both, and it stayed hovering like a shroud between them, even when they touched. Although Bismuth had been more than happy to lead her around by the arm, for the rest of that Winter and into the Spring the only other contact they’d shared would be the occasional hug... and even then, they’d both be trembling a little. Eventually these gentle caresses evolved to pecks on the cheek---or a quick, closed-mouth kiss on the lips if they thought they were alone---and sometimes Emmie would nuzzle the side of her head against Bismuth’s strong bicep as they sat together around a fire, their fingers drifting over the other’s. They’d danced together once, and although Bismuth planted a few light kisses on her neck and up to her temple, she seemed as nervous as Emmie had been taking her first steps alone on Earth.

But the warm kisses and the gentle whispers of _‘Baby Girl’_ in her ear had emboldened her, so, far too early, Emmie decided to surprise her by slipping a hand between her thighs---but immediately pulled back when Bismuth started screaming. As she blurted out apologies , Bismuth tore away from her and ran from the room, mortified. When Emmie finally found her, she was curled up in a ball by the door to the forge, shaking and wiping tears from her face, but she still managed to laugh and bluster about how she’d “stepped on something sharp”. Emmie had just nodded, recognizing the signs of a gem trying to put her shattered pride back together. That incident left them both aghast, and it was over a month before she felt those sweet lips again.

By then, despite their insistence they were ‘just friends’, everyone else had picked up on what was really going on. (Aside from Snowflake, who assumed that their behaviour towards each other meant that it was okay to kiss casual acquaintances. She didn’t clue in until she got slapped a few times). Gentle prodding from Rose wasn’t enough for them to get over their mutual reticence, and Pearl’s well-intentioned attempt at matchmaking just made things more awkward. It wasn’t until Biggs and Crazy Lace decided to trap them together in the forge that they finally got around to talking things out. After Bismuth’s hysterics, of course. As soon as the snickering conspirators let them out she’d charged at them like a rhino, her hands shifted to scythes; even though they both eventually reformed in the Amethysts’ puke bucket, they agreed it was worth it. And Emmie had to admit they were right.

A faint smile played over her lips as she thought back to that night. It had been so bittersweet. She’d had to calm Bismuth down; once she found out she was trapped, _again_ , she’d flown into a rage that Emmie could tell was just a mask for a remembered horror. Once she’d been soothed back to a proper state of mind, they’d sat down to talk, fingers interlaced, Emmie crouched in her broad lap.

 

It took hours, first to mumble about their pasts, then to dance around their feelings, and then to crack through into deeper confessions. It had ended up with Bismuth lying back on the steaming floor, Emmie on top of her, passing quiet whispers back and forth as they moved their hands around, cautiously testing, experimenting, feeling for new ground, finding out what was okay, what wasn’t, where the boundaries were, and which walls could be crumbled. They’d kept their clothes on, but that had been their first true kiss, the first time she’d clutched at her partner with legs and arms and tongues all tangled up. That memory, the taste of Bismuth’s mouth and her tears and the feel of her locs twisting around her fingers, still brought a little lump to Emmie’s throat.

She let a quiet sigh of contentment fluff between her teeth... a relationship. An actual relationship. Something forbidden to Emeralds on Homeworld. There’d been some story about an Emerald long ago who’d turned her eyes from the stars to a lover, and her light-year vision shrunk back down to that of any other gem. It was just a ridiculous myth, of course, but they’d been sworn to chastity ever since. Although many of them had little dalliances that they paid to keep quiet, Emmie had never taken the risk; in all her hundreds of years of being alive, it had only been during this planet’s Summer that she learned that lying in someone else’s arms could be something other than cold and terrifying. With Bismuth she learned what actual delight could be.

“ _Amor caecus est,_ ” she murmured.

She hugged the fresh sheets closer to her chest and laughed a little when she caught a whiff of the pheromones left in the air; even keeping the window open hadn’t completely dissipated the lingering smell of their lovemaking. If it hadn’t been for Garnet grabbing a loudly-protesting Bismuth by the elbows and frog-marching her back to work, the two of them could have stayed wrapped up in those sticky sheets forever.

A little thought nagged at her---it seemed odd that she hadn’t heard the door swing shut behind her---but she decided to investigate after she changed the sheets. The hinges must be giving out, that was all. It was five more steps to the bed. _One, two, th---_

And her foot landed on something hard and sharp.

She paused, one foot in the air, and then pulled it back, tapping the floor with her toes. _What? This... doesn’t make sense,_ she thought as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. _Bismuth knows better than to leave things where I could trip over them._ Turning slowly, she carefully placed the laundry on the ground and then got to her knees. As soon as she brushed her hand over what she’d stepped on, she gasped. She’d recognize that anywhere---the lid from the metal box Bismuth had made some time ago. The one they’d kept shoved under the bed.

And for good reason.

Sucking her teeth nervously, she swept her fingers around until she found its contents scattered all over the floor. Her frown deepened when she felt how far Toya’s shards had been flung; it was as if someone had dropped the box in surprise, or thrown it away from them in disgust.  
That’s when she heard it---a short, muffled whimper of fear from somewhere behind her.

Emmie sprang to her feet. “Who’s there?!”

Shuffling. Fabric rubbing against the stone wall. The intruder was trying to inch towards the door.

“No, wait!” She put her hands out in front of her and rushed forward, too distracted to count her steps. “Wait, please! Y-you don’t have to be afraid! I c-can explain!”

The door slamming into her outstretched palms startled her into taking a few steps backwards, which gave her unexpected guest the chance to make a break for it. By the time Emmie got to the entrance, her hands braced on the doorframe, the footsteps were already halfway down the hall.

“Wait! Please!” she called after her desperately. She’d only ever gone down this hall at a walking pace before, and usually on Bismuth’s arm---she knew she couldn’t break into a run without crashing into something. “ _Please_ don’t tell anyone!”

She put a tense fist to her mouth, and even under her own anxious whine she could hear the sound of skirts swishing around heavy, bare feet slapping on the tiles.  
She closed her eyes, biting her knuckles. “Oh no.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here’s a nice happy ending for these two---oh no wait there’s been a murder.  
> One of my favourite movies is Terminator 2, and I just loved writing the scene where Bismuth pulls a T-9000. [SHINK! METAL BLADE THROUGH THE FACE!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT_u9Rurrqg%20)
> 
> Leave it up to Pearl to invent Braille 4000 years before Louid Braille was even born. XD And the part about Emeralds not being allowed to have lovers on Homeworld was actually inspired by the "Lars of the Stars" sneak peek---that's why she's so crabby!
> 
> Anyway. I tried to convey different coping mechanisms both here and in Counterfeit Corruption---while neither of them will ever “get over” what they’ve been through, they’re reacting to it very differently based on their personalities. While Emmie remains shy and nervous, she’s just delighted to be free from her torment. Bismuth, on the other hand, internalized it and let it fester into anger, and now covers it up with a mask of bravado, especially in front of her friends (“Homeworld couldn’t lay a scratch on this gem!” First time I saw that episode I remember thinking “Methinks the lady doth protest too much...”)
> 
> Although I started out by writing Toya’s shattering in gruesome detail, I decided to leave it up to you who actually killed her---whether it was Emmie, or Bismuth, or both of them together.
> 
> Still trying to decide whether or not to include an epilogue, 5,300 years later...


	5. Epilogue - We All Have Fears

It took some time to make her way into the deepest, darkest part of the forge, but she didn’t hurry; Bismuth had her hands in her pockets as she walked, whistling and poring over the previous night’s activities. She still wasn’t sure if this was going to work, but she’d decided to act before she could think twice. Well, she _had_ thought twice, and three times, and again and again, but she’d pushed those grim ideas out of her head. This had to be done.

When she drew the bubble out of the air, she paused for a moment to admire how the Hawk’s-Eye glimmered with an iridescent sheen through the film containing it before releasing her, and stepped back. It only took a second for streams of light to radiate out from the dirty little pebble, and Hawky’s body slowly took form.

She hit the ground with a grunt and immediately pulled into the defensive stance she’d been in when Bismuth had poofed her. “…you worthless piece of rubble!” she finished, one hand pulled back for a punch.

The hot, sooty air caught at her lips and she stumbled backwards, looking around her in confusion. “W-what the hell?” she stuttered as she stared at the tight, close walls of the forge’s bottom level. “Where am---?”

When Bismuth cleared her throat, Hawky’s head snapped around, and the grimace on her face slowly twisted into a disappointed frown as she took in the blacksmith’s silhouette. “Oh, fuck me.”

“I thought I made it clear,” Bismuth said as she charged forward, one hand-hammer raised, “That I DON’T WANT TO!”

The flat of her hammer connected with Hawky’s skull, not hard enough to poof her again, just enough to knock her unconscious. Bismuth was snickering as she dragged the limp body down the hallway, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. She really, truly wanted to feel happy at this turn of events, but the triumph inside her felt cold and hollow as she thought back to last night…

~

“It’s fine, sweetie,” Emmie murmured as she soothed her hand over Bismuth’s shoulder.

“No it’s not,” she groaned from under the arm she had draped over her face. “I’m sorry, I…”

“Bismuth, it’s okay.”

“But you didn’t get off!” she said as she sat up, creaking the mattress. “You gotta be feeling like you’ve got a fire between your legs! Let me just---”

“No,” she said firmly. “You wanted to stop, so we stopped.”

Sighing, she pressed her cheek against the pillow; her lover’s fingers were still playing along her arm, but she couldn’t bring herself to reach up and grab her hand. She let out a groan as she rolled on her front and stuffed her face into the pillowcase. “You’re going to get sick of putting up with this, I just know it.”

“No I’m not!”

“Emmie, I have to get over this! I _should_ be over it by now!”

Her hand wandered to the back of her neck and began to gently massage the tense ropes of muscle she felt under her skin. “Stop that.”

Bismuth grunted, but she subtly shifted back into Emmie’s touch. “…That feels nice.”

She didn’t lift her head when she felt Emmie slide down from her kneeling position to lie beside her, one arm draped over her broad back. “You can take as long as you want. We have the rest of eternity.”

Eternity? That made something warm tingle in her gut, but her anger and frustration were still chewing away at her mind, and she couldn’t ignore the feel of those sharp teeth. “But you seem to be fine! I mean, what---what---what they… did to _you_ was worse, and for a hundred times as long, and I---”

Her sentence pinched out with a tiny “Eep!” when her lover grabbed one of her locs and yanked. “Stop it!” she snapped as she gave it another tug. “Stop it right now! It’s not a race, and I’m not ‘fine’, I’m just dealing with it differently than you are!”

When she let the loc fall from her grip, Bismuth slowly rolled over, rubbing the sore spot on her scalp, and looked at Emmie’s face. She felt a pinch of guilt when she saw her brows and lips were all screwed up in an attempt at anger, the pain hidden under that expression still clearly visible. “What?”

“You’re right, I should rephrase that.” She propped her elbow on the mattress and rested her chin on her fist. “I’m not dealing with it differently---I’m just dealing with it. You’re not. You’re bottling it up. It’s not healthy, Bismuth.”

“Well---well what am I supposed to do, huh? Go pour my heart out to fucking _Snowflake_ or someone? Let everyone know how weak I was? Who am I gonna talk to about it?!”

“Who are you talking to _right now?_ ”

“Oh no,” she grumbled as she flopped back on the pillow. “No way. I’m not dropping all my baggage on you. You’ve got enough to deal with without having to take care of me.”

Emmie rubbed a hand over her face and groaned in exasperation. “We can take care of each other. Bismuth…” She tried to get her arm around her again, but her lover pulled away. “Bismuth, come here. Listen to me.”

She didn’t move, but she didn’t keep pulling away, either, so Emmie shuffled up behind her and pressed her belly against Bismuth’s back, taking, for her, the relatively-unusual position of the big spoon. “Everyone’s afraid of something,” she whispered. “Even Hawky had a terrible fear that almost ruined her life.”

She grinned against her shoulderblade when she felt the blacksmith startle. “What was that?”

“Hawky was incredibly afraid of small, enclosed spaces,” she said quietly. “She planned most of her life around it. Once Pix locked her in the supply closet, thinking it was funny, and Hawky had a full-blown panic attack.”

Bismuth nodded as it dawned on her that the mercenary always left the door open when she joined her in the dungeon. “Who’s Pix?”

Emmie blushed. “She’s, um, no longer with us.”

“…Whoa. That bad, huh?”

“Mm-hm.” She let her hand drift up from Bismuth’s gut to her gem and began rubbing just under the bottom left corner, the spot that always seemed to soothe her, and was rewarded after moment with a happy purr. It made her grin. “An ‘undeserved’ shattering like that is a crime, and technically the other quartzes should have reported it to Homeworld, but they held a sort of trial of their own. They decided she’d acted in self-defense, and they’d keep it a secret. ‘Pix was lost in battle’ was the report they actually sent.”

She pressed her smiling lips against Bismuth’s spine when she heard a chuckle. “You see? Even those quartzes understood being afraid. Even _they_ protected someone who needed help.”

But, unbeknownst to her, that wasn’t the reason Bismuth’s spirits were so suddenly lifted. “So... Hawky’s claustrophobic,” she said, very glad Emmie couldn’t see her nasty grin.

“Severely claustrophobic.”

She reached down to squeeze her hand before turning around, still in her lover’s embrace. “You know what, Baby Girl? You’re right. I do need to get this out of my system. And, starting tomorrow, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so proud of you!” she said, unaware of how Bismuth was leering down at her. “But why tomorrow?”

“Because I can think of some other things I’d like to get up to tonight,” she snickered as she ducked her head under the covers.

~

Consciousness slowly ebbed back into Hawky’s blurry mind, and she blinked her sticky eyelids together through the pounding pain radiating from her temple. Pain…? If she could feel her head, that meant she wasn’t in a bubble, even though he felt trapped, constrained somehow. She couldn’t move; her arms and legs did respond to her commands, but they seemed to be stuck in place, and when she tried to summon her weapon all she got for her trouble was a white blast of heat and agony. “FUCK!”

“Oh good, you’re awake!”

Oh, stars… that annoying drawl she’d recognize anywhere. Shaking the last of the cobwebs from her mind, Hawky finally focused her eyes and looked up, her vision dimmed a bit from the magma-tinged light around her, and when she saw the Bismuth, she bared her teeth and tried to charge forward.

“Ah, ah! Don’t struggle. It’ll just make it worse.” 

When she’d made her attempt to lunge at her opponent she’d felt something cold grip at her wrists and ankles, heard the creak of metal against hard stone. Panting, Hawky glanced above her; thick metal manacles, obviously newly-forged and fresh, were pinning her arms back against what felt like sharp, glassy volcanic stone. A quick jiggle of her legs told her that they were similarly restrained… and she’d felt that hot electric bite before. She didn’t have to see her gem to know she was strapped into a blocker.

The dull, ashen light was playing off the walls in flickers, but it clearly illuminated the Bismuth’s body before her. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but I’m not a liar.”

Even though she could feel the first dark spiral of fear twisting in her solar plexus, Hawky forced a laugh. “I’ll say it’s interesting to see you with some clothes on, and I’m telling the truth!”

That made the Bismuth’s face twist in fury, and Hawky held on to the satisfaction, chewed it through her gums, hoping it could stave back the worry. She was trapped. She knew she was trapped. This… this was not good. “So I guess this is your cute little way of getting back at me, eh? You’re gonna fuck me, and then you’re gonna think I’ll beg for mercy, right? Well I’ve taken Jasper fusions!” she spat. “Enormous Jasper fusions! I can take whatever pathetic dick you can summon.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snipped as she turned her back. “I’ve seen more attractive things when I’ve picked my nose. I have something else in mind for you... Don’t go anywhere!”

Hawky hissed the choking air in through her front teeth as she watched the Bismuth lumber away down the hall. She tested her restraints a few times, and was sorely disappointed to learn they were, indeed, made of good quality. Well, no matter; she’d directed a platoon of Bismuths before---ironically, they’d been the ones to assemble the materials necessary to erect the barracks this one had been tortured in---and she knew they were generally stupid and short-sighted. Big, awkward, hulking brutes who thought with their fists first and minds later, if at all. She knew she’d get a beating, maybe a scolding, and would be let loose again. It was all just a matter of time.

_Just a matter of time,_ she assured herself, trying not to look at the walls. _Just a matter of time…_

When she finally came back she had a burlap sack hefted over her shoulder and a big grin on her face. “Didja miss me?”

“Take your top off and we’ll see!”

Bismuth’s grin widened as she watched Hawky’s eyes flitter around like lightning bugs in a bottle. The low ceiling, the left wall, which was far too close, the ground, the right wall, which was even _closer_ …

“What’s the matter?” she smirked. “Not a fan of tight spaces?”

“I liked _your_ tight space,” she shot back, but her eyes were still moving. And now her arms were too, jittering and shaking in her restraints. They were too small, they were pinching into her skin. She could tell she was at the end of a long hallway, one that widened further away from her, and she did her best to focus on that wide open space… anything to distract herself from the rock walls that she could _swear_ were starting to groan as they closed in.

“Yeah, about that.” She took a step closer, and flung the heavy sack she was carrying onto the ground. “You need some time to think about what you’ve done. And I’m gonna give you that time. Isn’t that nice of me?”

She pried her gaze away from the wide mouth of the hallway and down to the blacksmith, who was humming that _fucking_ tune the pearl always tried to sing. She wanted to kick, to scream, to tear away from the wall and rip this bitch’s throat out, but she wasn’t about to test the limits of the gem-blocker. How this Bismuth had figured out how to make one on her own was beyond her, and with a sick swallow she realized that she’d seriously underestimated her intelligence. “You look good on your knees,” she managed to snarl.

But the Bismuth just kept humming. By now she’d finished pouring something grey and powdery from her bag and into one of the two buckets she had by Hawky’s feet, and turned to the other; with one hand she poured a slow trickle of water into the first bucket, and shapeshifted her other hand into a long stick to stir.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Hawky huffed as she watched her churn the mixture into a gooey paste. “The others are going to come looking for me.”

“Ha! You couldn’t find the rebel base if I drew you a map.”

Oh, how that stung at her already-shaken pride. “Toya’s a good tracker. She’ll find me, just you wait.”

“Toya?” The Bismuth cocked her head with a look a false puzzlement on her face.

Her fingers curled into fists as she struggled to keep them from shaking. The walls were going to brush up against her. They were going to touch her. “Yes, Toya. The tall Cat’s-Eye who made you scream like a little bitch.”

She chuckled and nodded as she got to her feet. “Oh, right! _That_ Toya. Well, I have good news and bad news.” After dusting off her knees, she rose to her full height and made a point of standing as close to Hawky as possible without getting within biting range. “The good news is she’s already here.”

“Wh…” She wanted to look around, but she couldn’t, stars, she _couldn’t_ , those walls were groaning again, it was ringing in her ears now! “What do you mean? Where is she?”

“Look at your gem. Or, more specifically, what’s on it.”

It was hard to look down at her own collarbone, but Hawky managed to get a glimpse of the blocker by twisting her head, and… oh no. Oh, no. That shard was shimmering with a sickeningly familiar chatoyance.

Her head snapped back up, eyes wide, and she could have howled out loud when that stupid fucking Bismuth just shrugged at her. “That’s the bad news.”

“You bitch!” she screamed. “ _You sick bitch!!_ You’re a murderer!”

“And you’re a rapist,” she replied easily. “But you might want to go easy with the accusations---I never said _I_ did it.”

Her chest was starting to feel as tight as her fetters. This couldn’t be happening. Toya, the one gem she could always rely on, was lying in pieces and _the walls were moving, they were BREATHING on her!_ “I-If you didn’t, then who…?”

“Emmie did.”

“Who the hell is Em---” And her words just pinched out when it hit her. Diamonds, no... did she mean the Emerald? What else could 'Emmie' be short for? “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. The pearl? Really??”

“She’s an Emerald,” the Bismuth said coolly.

“There’s no _way_ she could have bested Toya! That stupid slut would be afraid of her own shadow if she could see it!” she shrieked as she rattled her body around, head thrashing madly. “And she’s a pearl! MY pearl! She’s MY PROPERTY! _GIVE HER BACK!_ ”

“Let me tell you something about pearls,” she said as she knelt down to finish stirring. “Here on Earth, they’re created by living creatures…”

“WHY THE HELL DO I CARE?!”

She ignored her. “When a bit of grit gets inside them, it hurts their flesh, so to protect themselves they build up layer after layer until they produce a pearl.” She scooped up a bit of the mixture to test its consistency. “They take something that caused them pain, and they turn it into something wonderful.”

She shifted a hand into a trowel and filled the top with the sludgy silt. “Don’t worry if that metaphor’s too complicated for you. You’ll have plenty of time to let it sink in.”

“Someone will find me,” she said, hating how close she was to gasping with fear. “Even with Toya gone, someone will find me.”

“You think?”

Hawky closed her eyes, partly to block out those damned walls, but mostly because she couldn’t bear to look into that smug face as she resorted to “I’ll scream.”

“You probably will.” The Bismuth idly traced a finger around her trowel as a smile played on her lips. “We’re half a mile under my forge. Nobody knows this hallway is here but me, and between the volcano and the tonnes of rock above you, you could set off a Wailing Stone down here and no one would hear it. But don’t worry,” she added with a wink, “You might get lucky. The volcano’s due to blow… in about ten thousand years.”

She stood again, making sure to keep her trowel balanced, and with her free hand grabbed Hawky by the jaw and forced her to meet her eye. They both felt the shudder that went through her body; all Hawky could see in the Bismuth’s eyes was a fissured kind of anger, something raw like a stitched-up wound. It was the look of a gem who was weighted down with bottled-up pain and no real way to relieve it.

“You have used your life to do terrible things,” the Bismuth said with an eerie softness. “Some gems might say you don’t deserve to live. But I’m not one of them. I think you need some time to yourself to take a good, hard look at what you’ve done.”

“Fuck. You.”

She released her jaw and gave her cheek the same sarcastic pat Hawky had given her just a few short weeks ago. “Well, as much as I’d like to stay and chat, I don’t want the mortar to dry.”

“…Mortar?”

“Yup!” She dropped back to her knees and began smoothing her trowel over the ground just a few inches from her prisoner’s toes. “Mind if I put the first layer of bricks right here?”

She’d been so focused on the walls that she hadn’t noticed the pile of bricks just behind the Bismuth’s back. Her jaw dropped open. Mortar. Bricks. A new wall. The realization hit her with a searing, clawing, _screaming_ kind of terror. “Oh… No… no no no!”

“Oh, you _don’t_ mind? That’s great, ‘cause this is where they’re gonna go!”

She began to whistle as she laid the first few by Hawky’s feet with practiced ease. Sparing a look up at her prisoner who’d begun to uselessly kick at her restraints, she licked her lips and decided to switch to the lyrics she’d been taught: “ _Esti infirmum est scintilla / Est in tenebris lumen…_ ”

“Fuck you!” she howled. “I hate you, fuck you fuck you!!” 

The first layer finished, she topped it off with a thick coat of mortar and began to build the second. “That’s a human song. You know what it means? ‘Though the spark is weak, there’s light in the darkness’. Can’t say you’re going to have that much once I’m done, though.”

“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you and your stupid pearl! I’LL KILL YOU!”

“Good luck with that. Hm…” She used her arm-span to roughly measure the distance between the two walls. “Only about four feet wide down here. That’s enough space for you, isn’t it? Hope this last wall doesn’t make you feel boxed in, honey.”

“You’re…” She had to blink away the acrid sweat that was running down her face. “You’re joking. This is a joke.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Does it look like I’m joking?”

“You’re trying to teach me a lesson,” she huffed as she watched the third row taking shape. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

The Bismuth didn’t answer. She just kept slapping the mortar into place.

“Well it worked! I’m scared, okay?! I’m really fucking scared! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?!”

“No.” She slammed the last brick of the third row down and then stared coldly into Hawky’s bugging eyes. “I want you to suffer.”

She keened out in desperation as froth formed on her lips. “I’m suffering, trust me, I’m suffering!”

“I want to you to feel all the terror and agony you inflicted on everyone you’ve hurt in your whole miserable life.” The brick-laying was getting faster as her temper rose. “Every one of these bricks---I want you to think of them as every gem you’ve wronged, every bad thing you’ve done. I want you to lose your mind in the tomb that _you built yourself!_ ”

Her skull banged on the wall so hard it rattled her molars, but even the stars swimming in her vision couldn’t block out the growing shadow the new wall was forming. “I was just doing my job!”

“Your job?!” she said incredulously. She was off her knees now that the wall had grown enough for her to have to stand. “Don’t you know that torture never works? What information did you get out of me, hm?”

“I… was… just… doing… my… job!”

“If your job description includes pulling teeth out and screwing someone against her will, you might want to fucking renegotiate!” Oddly, she left one brick out of the row she was working on and started on the next. It was just enough of a gap for Hawky to see out, and her teeth started to chatter when she looked with a mix of rage and despair at the Bismuth’s cold, furious face. “Were you ‘just doing your job’ when you were raping my lover?!”

“Your…” Even with the gross, cloying feeling of the bricks pressing up against her, up against the boundary she’d always kept around her, Hawky had to splutter with laughter. “Your _lover?_ She’s your lover now? Oh, go to hell and step off that self-righteous pedestal, you fat bitch! You see? You wanted to fuck her, too! You’re just the same as me!”

She used the brick she was holding to smash Hawky across the face. “You take that back! I am nothing like you!”

“Aren’t you?” She licked the inside of her cheek where her sharp incisors had cut a gash, then turned back to peer at her from over the top of her wall. “You’re using the pearl and you’re torturing me! You’re doing everything I did!”

“I am dispensing justice,” she hissed. “I’m giving you what you deserve. I’m doing this for the right reason---you were acting out of evil selfishness. And I’ll have you know,” she added as she worked around the peephole she’d felt in front of Hawky’s glowing eyes, “That _everything_ I do with Emmie is consensual. But you don’t really understand what that means, do you?”

The mead the humans gave her made her hallucinate sometimes, and right now her head was swimming with the same giddy and half-mad waves the intoxication caused. She couldn’t feel herself laughing, but she could hear it echoing off the sick, living, moving walls. That’s all this was. A hallucination. Any minute now, she was going to snap out of it. She was going to wake up back in the barracks, all limbs free, and wide open spaces around her. _She wasn’t trapped._  
But hallucinations never caused her physical pain. Her gem was stinging, her mouth hurt, her wrists and ankles were growing numb from the tight confines of the fetters. She never needed to breathe but she knew, she just _knew_ these walls would make her suffocate.

“But I’m not heartless,” the Bismuth said as she ducked out of her tiny line of sight. “I won’t leave you completely alone.”

“W-what?”

When her head popped back up, she was grinning. “Here, have a friend!”

Hawky choked on her thick spit when she saw what her gravedigger was inching into her tomb. Oh stars, no. No! One of those hideous little Earth creatures, the ones that she always hated to see scuttling out of the darkness at her with their spindly legs. It stepped off the Bismuth’s finger and gave the edge of the stone wall a few experimental taps; then it pulled all eight legs up underneath itself and dropped down to her feet on a elegant line of silk. She frantically tried to step on it, but she could barely lift her foot.

The Bismuth applied the last coat of mortar and shifted her trowel back into a hand, wiping it off on her apron. With a sickly-sweet smile, she offered “Any last words before I place the final brick?”

The tiny creature was tickling over her toes, the barricades were sinking their dark teeth into her soul, and the only light she could see was trickling in from the tiny space left just in front of her eyes, and she screamed as loud as she ever had before, hoping she could wail so loud it would reach up from the walls of her grave, through the crust of this miserable planet, out into the open air, far enough for someone, _anyone_ to hear.

“I’m sorry!” Hawky bawled as hot tears blurred her vision, the last thing she knew she’d ever see. “Dammit, I’m sorry!”

One tremulous flicker of hope shot up through her when she finally saw that mask on the Bismuth’s face crack, if only slightly. “…For what?”

Hawky smiled, not even caring as her tears and sweat slid over her teeth. “For everything I’ve done. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

The last brick was in her hand, but she didn’t make any move to place it.

_Finally. Finally! I’m changing her mind! This is working!_ “I mean it! I’m sorry!” Her mind fumbled around as she thought of what she could possibly say, what she could feed this rage-crazed gem to make her start chipping the wall back down. She could put her pride away for a few minutes, just long enough to get out. Now, think---what would a pathetic little fuck-toy want to hear? Oh, right… “Y-you didn’t deserve any of it. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine.”

She was still hesitating.

Hawky chuckled. Of course, that was the failing of every Crystal Gem---they all had soft spots, stupid, weak squishy bits in their cores that could be poked and prodded like an exposed underbelly. Lucky for her, Hawk’s-Eyes were stronger than that. “I’ve learned my lesson. You’re right. You were always right. I’m truly, deeply sorry for how much pain I put you through.” Then she ran her tongue over her teeth and widened her smile. “Hey, you want the pearl? Keep her! Consider it my gift to you.”

The Bismuth’s eyes darkened, and Hawky realized with a cold, wet, sinking feeling that she’d accidentally dropped her trump card.

“You’re not sorry for what you’ve done,” she whispered as she lifted her final brick. “You’re just sorry you got caught.”

“ _For the love of the Diamonds, Bismuth!!_ ” Hawky screamed as her last ray of light was snuffed out.

“Yes,” she said quietly as she sealed her rapist’s mausoleum. “For the love of the Diamonds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bismuth gets her revenge. If you need a drink, I have [A Cask of Amontillado](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqSIRsmu7DE) to offer you ;)
> 
> In case you couldn't tell, I'm extremely claustrophobic. What people often misunderstand is that it's not the fear of small spaces---it's the fear of being TRAPPED in a small space. Goddamn, was this ever my worst nightmare---however, unlike Fortunato, Hawky won't die in there. She'll stay alive for thousands of years, chained to the wall, until... originally I wrote this from Garnet's perspective, who found her after 5,300 years, but I thought this would be more fun!
> 
> I hope I made it clear that Emmie didn't know Bismuth had Hawky trapped in a bubble, so she unwittingly told her how to put her in her place, so to speak. 
> 
> Phew... what a way to end this story. Up to you whether or not Bismuth was in the right.


	6. F̹̻ṛ̻̙̦̠͉͜ͅE̵̡̙̱͍͕͉̜̤e̵͎͠ͅD̸̛̳̗͍ͅo̮̕M̲͙̞͕͉̦̳͖

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh

**Author's Note:**

> Phew... worked through some trauma to get this written. It just wouldn't let me go! To my surprise, after I'd figured out this whole plotline, I found out that Emeralds were considered to be beneficial to eyesight in New Age teachings. Well... it made me laugh :) Thanks for reading!


End file.
